Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has stated that the ongoing exercise of purification of land records is going to herald a new era in the maintenance of land records as it is going to put an end to confusion over the exact extent of land in different categories and bring clarity.
In his reply to the short discussion on updation of land records in the Assembly on Tuesday, the Chief Minister announced that issuance of new pattadar passbooks with 26 high-security features prepared after cleansing of records would begin from January 26, next. Instead of unwanted details as provided for in the existing ones, the new officials documents would have only useful details of land owners and their holdings.
The new passbooks would have better security features than passports as they were being designed to be tamper-proof and water-proof. He explained that the exercise would bring out the details of cultivable, forest, converted for non-agricultural needs, acquired for various development needs, government, waqf, endowments, assigned and other categories of lands.
Further, he stated that he had already cleared appointment of 1,000 Revenue Department Information Technology (RDIT) to be stationed in all Sub-Registrar, Revenue Divisional, Joint Collector, Collector and Land Revenue Offices, for instant updation of land records in the event of any changes (transactions). Continuing the existing 141 Sub-Registrar Offices in as many mandals, the government would also make Tehsildars in the remaining mandals registration authorities along with vesting powers of mutation, which was lying only with RDOs now.
Responding on Congress member M. Bhatti Vikramarka's fears that large extents of land was being pushed into list B, lacking clarity or disputed, to deny the agriculture investment input to be given from the Kharif next, the Chief Minister said they were unfounded since an average of 87% land titles were already declared clear by placing them in list A. The percentage was over 90 in 14 out of 30 districts where the exercise was in progress with Jagtial having 99% of its land titles in list A.
Once the cleansing of land records in 10,806 revenue villages in rural areas was over, the government would take up the task in the remaining 79 revenue villages in urban areas, mostly in and around Hyderabad, most likely in the coming February. Floating a loud thinking, the Chief Minister stated that giving survey numbers to lands could also be simplified with farmer-wise numbers with sub-numbers to his/her holding at different places.
Dispelling apprehensions over the role of proposed 'Rythu Samanvaya Samithis', the Chief Minister stated that a bill was likely to be introduced during the ongoing Assembly session defining their role. He made it clear that the organised farmers' groups would have no link to Revenue Department but their role would be limited to agriculture related matters to guide the farming community.
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