HYDERABAD: The proposed new Revenue Act is all set to clip the powers of Tahsildars. Either the joint collector or the district collector will get more power in Revenue department. A day after Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced that the new Revenue Act would be enacted in the ensuing Budget session of the Assembly, senior Revenue department officials on Friday indicated that the powers of Tahsildars would be reduced considerably.
Either the joint collector or district collector would be given powers like mutation of land records, official sources said. It may be recalled that in the new Municipal Act too, district collectors were given more power over municipal commissioners. “Since the size of districts has been reduced, we decided to give more power to collectors,” an official said.
Govt will repeal some outdated Acts: sources
According to officials, there are around 150 Acts relating to the Revenue Department. “Some of the Acts are exclusively for the State of Telangana. Some of them are no longer useful. The State government will repeal such outdated Acts. Some will be clubbed together into one,” the sources said.
Asked which Acts would be repealed, the sources said: “We have prepared the list for repealing some of the Acts and clubbing some Acts. But we will not make it public now. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will soon hold a review meeting on the new Revenue Act and take a decision on these outdated Acts,” sources said.
Asked about the role of VROs, the officials pointed out that during the then Chief Minister NT Rama Rao’s regime, the nomenclature of ‘Karanam’ was changed to ‘VRO’, and hinted at some change in the nature of work of VROs. “Some VROs are appointed directly by the Public Service Commission. They are trained and have some knowledge. But some VROs are promoted from village-servant level. These promoted VROs did not have any vision or knowledge. The government may take a decision on the VRO system soon,” the officials said. The nomenclature of the district collector and joint collector too will change, they added.
Move aimed at making dept corruption-free
One of the major objectives of the new Revenue Act is to make the Revenue department corruption-free. As the levels of corruption were high because of the deeds of Tahsildars and village revenue officers (VROs), the State government proposed to reduce their powers. “The VROs are not covered under the Revenue Act. The Act concerns Tahsildar (earlier called mandal revenue officers) and those above them,” an official pointed out