HYDERABAD: As part of its plans to bring in reforms in land administration, the state government is planning to reintroduce the village-level revenue administration system by absorbing former village revenue officers/assistants, albeit after a departmental test to ascertain their competence.
The state government is learnt to have made provisions for this in the Record of Rights (ROR) Bill (Draft) 2024 which is likely to be tabled in the winter session of the Legislative Assembly, a source in the Revenue department confirmed.
In the proposed reforms, the government plans to hold the village level officers accountable for any irregularities. The government also plans to go for manual maintenance of land records at village level to ensure transparency. As of now, Telangana has around 10,500 revenue villages.
However, the government is yet to decide on the nomenclature of the village level revenue officers through which it wants to manage all local level administrative works like issuing community and education related certificates.
The village revenue system in the state was abolished twice due to corrupt practices.
In 1985, the then chief minister NT Rama Rao abolished teh Patel Patwari system by bringing the Andhra Pradesh Abolition of Posts of Part-time Village Officers Act, 1985. The VRO and VRA system was reintroduced in undivided AP. In 2020, the then CM K Chandrasekhar Rao brought in the Telangana Abolition of the Posts of Village Revenue Officers (VROs) Act. Subsequently, the land administration is being handled by mandal and district level officers, including the district collector.
In the existing system, the farmers — the agriculture land owners — are facing utmost difficulty in dealing with the land records.