Officials of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) conducted raids on 20 Mandal Revenue Offices (Tehsildar offices) across the State on Friday. They reportedly found unaccounted cash, pattadar passbooks and poor maintenance of registers.
The ACB teams carried out simultaneous raids and interacted with the visitors and the petitioners. They found that some thousands of petitions received through Mee-Seva centres and online were piled up in the offices.
ACB Director-General P.S.R. Anjaneyulu said that raids were conducted on Etcherla, Vepada, Bheemili, Sabbavaram, Pedapudi, Peddapuram, Chintalapudi, Avanigadda, Thotlavallur, Ponnaluru, Kavali, Sulluripeta, Vadamalpet, Brahmamgari Mattam, Mudigubba, Battiprolu, Nadendla and Kallur tehsildar offices.
Pending petitions
The investigation officials noticed that many petitions submitted for mutation and title deed, pattadar passbooks, adangal correction, e-passbooks and house sites were found pending on the tables.
During verification, the ACB teams reportedly confiscated huge amount of unaccounted cash from the staff. Cash had been seized from almost all the MRO offices, in which the surprise raids were conducted, said an ACB official, who participated in the raids.
Poor maintenance
In many tehsildar offices, the government land registers, mutation, adangal, field measurement books, Mee-Seva applications registers and other ledgers were not updated and maintained properly.
The DG said that amount had been seized from the Village Revenue Officers (VROs), Additional Revenue Inspectors and other office staff.
“We seized the copies of the documents and the ledgers from all the tehsildar offices. The ACB officials were surprised that many old pattadar passbooks and passbooks to be distributed to the petitions were kept in the offices,” Mr. Anjaneyulu said.
Raids on Mee-Seva centres
The ACB DG said that inspections were also conducted in the Mee-Seva centres, located the tehsildar offices and many documents, applications and other material had been seized.
“We will verify the seized documents and books thoroughly. The raids will continue on the tehsildar offices,” Mr. Anjaneyulu said.
