Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has announced a month’s basic salary as incentive to employees of the Revenue department who have successfully completed the purification of land records taken up between September 15 and December 15 last year.
The decision would benefit a total of 35,749 employees, including 10,809 in the revenue department, 24,410 village revenue assistants (VRAs) and 530 survey employees. Complimenting the employees for completing the difficult exercise in a short span of 100 days, the Chief Minister said such an exercise was not taken up anywhere in the country in recent decades.
Stating that land records had not been maintained properly for the past 80 years, he said the issue had been subjected to total neglect. As a result, data on land records was not updated in spite of several transactions of sale or purchase of land units. Purification of land records had become necessary as the State Government had decided to implement the investment support scheme from next kharif season by establishing the rights of actual owners of land.
As part of the land records purification, the revenue employees brought about clarity on ownership rights on lands by visiting the villages and speaking to farmers. It had also brought about clarity with regard to assignment lands. About 22.5 lakh acres of land was distributed among the poor but there was no clarity on the ownership rights on 20 lakh acres. The officials were making efforts for clarity on the remaining 2.5 lakh acres.
Except for lands on which cases were pending in courts and which were in litigation between the revenue and forest departments, the exercise had brought about total clarity on ownership of remaining lands.
Finance Minister Etala Rajender, Adviser to Government (Finance) G.R. Reddy, senior officials S. Narsing Rao, Rajeshwar Tiwari, K. Ramakrishna Rao, N. Siva Shankar, Vakati Karuna and Smita Sabharwal and Collectors M. Raghunandan Rao (Ranga Reddy) and M.V. Reddy (Medchal) attended the review meeting.
