Telangana Revenue services to go online to root out graft

Hyderabad: Telangana Government's one of the key wings - State Revenue department will soon bid adieu to the practice of issuing land, caste and income certificates manually. All such services will become 100 per cent online.

The Revenue department feels that this will help the department to come out of its tag that corruption is the highest in this department. The revenue officials will also be barred from issuing notices manually to the farmers on land ownership and for mutation certification. Sources said that some radical steps are likely to be taken to check the corruption in department even before the revamp of the Revenue department as desired by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.

The recent survey conducted by an official committee disclosed that the revenue officials at Mandal level were exploiting farmers and common people by collecting money to issue certificates.

The farmers are facing hardships in getting clear land title deeds. In some cases, officials were harassing farmers in handing over notices about land mutations and other land-related disputes. Farmers are unable to get land documents without paying bribe. The only option is to introduce online delivery of every official document from the Revenue department. Under the new system, the applicants will get the original certificates by downloading from authorised websites or from the Mee Seva centres directly. The issuing Authority will also be prohibited from manual verification of the applications submitted by the farmers and local people.

Field inspection, if required, will be done by video recording.

The Chief Commisssioner of Land Administration (CCLA) will monitor every application filed by farmers for land-related documents. Officials estimate that under the present system, corruption in this department was to the tune of about Rs 300 crore. Even income and caste certificates will be issued through online.