As officials at the ground level work overnight to set right the records to meet the deadline for distribution of cheques to farmers, several mistakes are apparently creeping in due to work pressure.
And rectifying those mistakes is again a Herculean task for them, while at the receiving end are village revenue officers who are entrusted with the job of ensuring that everything goes smooth before the cheque distribution starts on May 10. Shortage of funds for hiring private computer operators to feed the data is another issue hindering the work progress. “The hired private operators for feeding the data are working for over 12 to 14 hours to finish the task on time and the pressure is showing with wrong information being fed into the system,” says a village revenue official in Yadadri district wishing anonymity. “Once identified, we have to rectify the mistakes and that is taking a lot of time,” said an operator hired for the work.
The mistakes are being noticed by the farmers themselves and they are alerting the officials, while the VROs are also re-verifying the information. “Farmers are eagerly waiting for the cheques and they don’t want to lose out on the money,” an official said.
But the village-level and mandal-level officials fear some backlash from the farmers during cheque distribution as in several cases, the land records are yet to be rectified or in dispute. “Several farmers keep calling us to know whether their record is perfect and if not, when would it be rectified. About 30% of records are yet to be cleared in our mandal,” reveals an official wishing anonymity.
A quick verification done at a village in Aler constituency revealed that the officials entered reasons such as lack of digital signatures, agriculture land recorded as residential property, extent of land yet to be measured, a portion of land under dispute, land being a mix of residential and agriculture one, court cases, Laavani to be changed to pattas, land sold but name not changed in records and death of land owner among others.
“This effectively means several farmers will not get cheques owing to these issues and this may lead to heartburn,” an official explained. “We wish the government gave us enough time to ensure that more mistakes were rectified.”
