Even as thousands of people are waiting in every district for their error-free Pattadar passbooks and some seem to be growing restive over the delay in carrying out corrections, Revenue authorities affirm that due process is being followed to carry out corrections and is in its final lap.
There is no question of adhoc or random validation. Whenever a complaint about erroneous pattadar passbook is made, it is entered first in the mobile App, notices are issued online followed by document and field verification done if required. Only then correction is carried out and uploaded with the digital signature of the Tehsildar to prevent any manipulation thereafter, officials clarified.
Of the 57 lakh Khatas or accounts that were identified for giving new pattadar passbooks under the Land Record Updation Programme, the government had given order to print over 49 lakh PPBs and of that 42.6 lakh were distributed.
About 7 lakh PPBs could not be given for printing initially for various reasons. One reason was there were claims and counter claims regarding land title and many land owners did not submit Aadhaar numbers and some land owners were not around in the village or away in other States and overseas so their data could not be verified.
Subsequently 2.5 lakh land owners furnished their Aadhaar numbers and such passbooks were given for printing and being distributed, officials explained.
Meanwhile, problems cropped up as several farmers who were issued new PPBs found the data erroneous. There were errors in the name of the account holders, gender, caste, category, extent of land and survey numbers.
“Over 7 lakh passbooks were corrected so far and 4.5 lakh passbooks are in transition and being sent to various districts and mandals for distribution. And the remaining will be corrected and printed in another two weeks,” said V.Karuna, Director, Land Administration.
If there are errors in the first page of passbook like the name of land owner, father’s name, address, Aadhasr, photo etc., they would be corrected and sent for reprint to the central agency. But, for only errors in the page 2 such as land details, extent of land, they were being printed at mandal revenue office itself after correction to speed up the process.
After the ongoing correction of erroneous PPBs to be completed by August third week, the Office of Chief Commissioner of Land Administration will keep the communication channels open for one more month and a control room and a help desk will be set up to address the grievances.
People can take copy of Pahani in the Mee Seva centre. Both Mee Seva and Sub Registrar offices have access to the most concurrent data base with the updated and corrected records of Pattadar pass books, she said.
“Of 57 lakh accounts, at least 52 lakh accounts would be updated and error free ones. Thus, a substantive part of land records would have been dealt with. Serious land disputes under Part B would be taken up in the next phase,” she said.
But, many land owners with grievances about errors in the new PPBs are sore even months after bringing the errors to the notice of village revenue officers, no process has been set in motion to correct them. “We went round the offices several times and no one seem to have clue to how and when they can be rectified,” said a land owner. His complaint is his new PPB recorded only three acres while he owned four acres while his old pass book showed correct extent of land. As a result he was given Rythu Bandhu cheque only for three acres. Much to his chagrin, part of his land has been recorded in the PPB of another person and the anomaly was not rectified yet. There are hundreds of such cases in Ghatkesar mandal, he says.
Officials, however, claimed every complaint was now necessarily being entered in the mobile App before carrying out correction process with three levels of validation done. They admitted that initially Tehsildars found it difficult to carry out the corrections in the correction module for simple errors. After the bugs in the software were fixed work has picked up pace and revenue staff are quite familiar with the correction module, they said. In the case of those who have given Aadhaar numbers and still awaiting passbooks, one reason could be they may not have given their consent to share Aadhar data or they may be some issue with land title, sources said.
Wanaparthy Collector Swathi Mohanty said after errors were brought to notice in the new PPBs, the second phase of correction was done in a systematic manner. In Wanaparthy, PPBs were given to 85% to 90% of extent of land and Rythu Bandhu cheques were also encashed. Only 2,500 Khatas were left for correction.
Asked about complaints of wrong recording of land extent, she said for decades no survey was done to fix boundaries nor mutation was done either after death of original land owner or after a land transaction. There were cases of fraudulent records of title too. The district administration did lot of work in fixing exact extent of land by calling both the parties and uploading the updated records in a State where no land survey was done for decades” she said.
