Most of the Revenue offices, including taluk and village offices, are overburdened with work due to inadequate staff as a result of inordinate delay in filling vacancies of deputy collectors, tahasildars, deputy tahasildars and other officials in these offices. With the Lok Sabha polls nearing, the delay in filling the posts will only create more confusion.
About 20 deputy collector posts and as many as 50 posts of tahasildar/senior superintendent and about 100 deputy tahasildar posts are lying vacant in the state. The vacancies have arisen following a large number of retirements in November. The various Revenue staff unions, which have protested against the delay in filling the vacancies, said that the situation will become worse with the General Elections.
Revenue officials, especially deputy collectors and tahasildars and deputy tahasildars, are involved in conducting elections including revision of electoral rolls and issuance of photo identity cards. Kerala Revenue Department Staff Association (KRDSA) president K Sreekantan Nair said that the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) both at the higher and lower level, has not met this year, which has led to the delay. He also said that development works, for which land had to be acquired, would come to a standstill if there are not enough officials. He alleged that there was a move to sabotage the promotion of senior tahasildars to deputy collectors.
“A test for selection of deputy collectors was conducted and ranklist prepared. There is a move to delay the DPC, which could hold up the promotions,’’ he said. Stating that about 600 vacancies are now there in the Revenue Department, Kerala Land Revenue Staff Association (KLRSA) secretary M K Krishnan Namboothiri noted that the taluk and village offices are overburdened with work and the delay in filling the posts will only add to it. The offices are flooded with applications and even urgent matters are pending, he said. Namboothiri also shared the same opinion as of Nair on the issue of DPC. “The DPC list is there but the government is saying that new promotions will be done only after the coming up of a new ad hoc DPC,’’ he said.
Both the KRDSA and KLRSA also opined that the government was yet to implement the Ninth Pay Commission’s recommendation of more posts of village assistants for reducing the workload at village offices.
