KCR fiat to Collectors: Cleanse land records

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao here on Thursday pointed out that non-maintenance of revenue records has triggered litigations. The Revenue officials have abandoned their primary duty of maintaining the revenue records and instead they are busy implementing several welfare and development programmes.

The Chief Minister, who held a review meeting with the Collectors, Joint Collectors, and Revenue Divisional Officers (RDOs) on rectification, cleansing, and updating of land records, here at Pragati Bhavan, directed the officials to take up the land survey mission on top priority.

He referred to the reports that the land details submitted by the Agriculture and Revenue Departments did not match with each other. It has created a serious hurdle for the government to provide input assistance of Rs 8,000 per acre for two crops to the farmers.

Further, the government had acquired several lakhs of acres of lands for laying railway lines and building schools and hospitals. But the records, which were not updated, showed the lands acquired by the government were still in the names of the farmers. It led to disputes and conflicts, he said.

For this purpose, the Chief Minister asked the Revenue officials to first cleanse the ownership rights of undisputed lands comprising around 95 per cent of lands in a village.

Similarly, in the second phase, he directed them to identify the lands entangled in legal disputes. The details of such lands should be updated on the basis of the verdicts given by the court. Also, he asked the officials to identify the lands belonging to the government, Wakf, endowment and those owned by government departments.

KCR said each District Collector would be given Rs 50 lakh for the purpose of land records rectification, cleansing and updating. The responsibility in selecting the teams to do the work would be the responsibility of the Collectors, he said.
He said that farmers in the State should be given water for cultivation, finance and investment, apart from minimum support price (MSP).

The State government had already taken up construction of a number of irrigation projects. Besides, farmers would be given 24-hour quality power supply from the next Rabi season. This would enable the farmers to fully exploit surface and groundwater.

Apart from input assistance, the farmers associations and coordination committees would be formed to ensure that the farmers secure MSP for their produce. In case of farmers being denied MSP, State Farmers Council would buy the produce at a fixed price.

For this purpose, KCR said that the State government would allocate Rs 500 crore, besides giving guarantee to raise another Rs 6,000 crore. The State-level Farmers Coordination Council (SLFCC) would be given powers to process the produce sold by farmers.

Ranga Reddy District Collector Raghunandan Rao, Siddipet Collector Venkatram Reddy, Miryalguda RDO Kishan Rao, Khammam Collector Lokesh Kumar, Bhongir RDO Bhoopal Reddy and others narrated their experiences when they on an experimental basis carried out the task of rectification, cleansing and updating of land records. According to them, about 95 per cent of lands in the villages are free from any litigation or disputes.