Recently, the Telangana government came out with revenue reforms. Tahsildars are being given the powers of registration of agriculture lands. This will do away the present system of the registrar registering the sale transaction and then the tahsildar mutating the revenue records. Tahsildar will register the sale transaction as well as mutate the revenue records.
The law lays down that registration of a document by itself does not confer title and the tahsildar can reject mutation of the revenue records if he comes to a conclusion that the seller did not have the title to the land. Secondly, a lot of people are not aware that registration by itself does not confer title deed and feel that they have a right to the land once the registration is done, only to find at a later date that what is more important is the mutation of the revenue records.
This confusion and ambiguity are put to rest with this new legislation. Since tahsildar is the authority not only to register but also to mutate, he cannot refuse to mutate once he registers a sales transaction. The public will also be spared of going around a number of offices to get their work done.
The second issue to be examined with reference to this reform is whether the tahsildar, who is the touring officer with multifarious responsibilities, would be able to do justice to these new responsibilities. Even today, at the time of mutation, this is a major problem that the public faces in the taluk offices. It may be worthwhile to entrust this responsibility to a non-touring officer working within the taluk office exclusively. Then the system may work better. For the other mutation of land records by succession, the present system, with some slight modifications, is going to be continued.
That this reform will end all revenue disputes is totally mistaken. What the tahsildar will be registering and mutating will only be a presumptive title and nothing prevents someone agitating for a conclusive title in a civil court for the same piece of land. In Telangana area, it is a common practice to dig out some pharman given by the Nizam and start a civil dispute claiming title to the land.
Similarly, unsuspecting persons may have bought land which was earlier assigned to weaker sections on the condition that it cannot be alienated to others. Similarly, there are also cases of protected tenant lands bought by unsuspecting public leading to prolonged litigations. Unless the government comes up with concrete measures to address these problems, revenue disputes will continue.
Then there is the peculiar issue of 22-A register. This register was prepared and shared with the registration department to prevent registration of government lands. But the register is prepared in such a faulty manner that details of a lot of private lands are also entered and also those of a number of other lands where already registrations had been done and mutations had been carried out by the Revenue department. This is a serious issue and needs to be addressed. The massive corruption case of Medak which came to light was only to get the land out of the 22 A register. One can understand the enormity of the problem from this and it is high time the government applies its mind seriously to this issue and finds a solution to the problem.
One of the reasons for the Revenue department to be in such a mess is that it is the general administrative department at the district and taluk level that is handling multiple activities other than the core work of revenue. There is very slack supervision, hence the lower level functionaries are becoming the centres of power.
Unless this issue is also addressed and officers like the RDO and the joint collector start functioning exclusively as revenue officers, things may not improve substantially.
Political interference of course is a major issue in the Revenue department. It plays an important part in postings, promotion and so on. It would be too much to expect improved performance in spite of all these reforms as long as it continues. There used to be a time when RDO postings were done by the CCLA as per certain norms. Today, it is done at the instance of the Minister and no norms are followed. It is nothing short of expecting a miracle to think that a system, so politicised, would deliver the desired objective just because some reforms had been undertaken.
Survey is one of the most neglected parts of the Revenue department’s administration. The department is understaffed, with limited promotional avenues for the limited staff, and quite a number of problems they have to deal with are survey-related. There is no mention about the survey department in the recently enacted revenue reforms.
It is time the State government addresses this important wing linked to the Revenue department. The manner in which the survey is done in Hyderabad state as compared to the Madras presidency had a number of pitfalls, which gave rise to too many disputes related to the survey for the administration to handle.
Protection of government endowment lands is also an important aspect of the revenue administration. The government land is nobody’s land. They are occupied, and title deeds are created and sold away as private lands. The sorry state of revenue records facilitates this and there is a strong politico-bureaucratic network thriving on selling the government lands. The government is yet to come out with an action plan for the protection of both government and endowment lands.
Legislation on revenue reforms contains another provision of establishing land tribunals to deal with land disputes exclusively, instead of the present system of these cases being heard and disposed of by RDOs, Collectors and CCLA. This is a reform in the right direction.
Most of the revenue functionaries have multiple responsibilities, and hence, hearing of the revenue cases and disposing them off becomes an issue of last priority for them. That is one of the reasons why there is prolonged litigation in revenue cases. Exclusive tribunals for this can expedite the settlement of cases. But the quality of people manning them is also equally important. Exclusive post of CCLA appeals is already there but the most corrupt officers generally get posted there.
All these issues are equally relevant in the state of Andhra Pradesh as well. Let AP also come up with revenue reforms as this the cutting edge department which makes or breaks the reputation of the governments.
– IYR Krishna Rao
Chief Secretary of AP (Retired)