Land conversion in Kozhikode city has been in a standstill for the past four months due to mistakes in the data bank published by the Kozhikode Municipal Corporation. Thousands of applications to verify whether a certain piece of land came under the data bank, are pending at the Krishi Bhavan in Puthiyara due to this reason.
Corporation Councillor from Kommeri ward, Kavitha Arun, had recently brought the issue before the Corporation Council in the form of a submission. She said that there were a lot of mistakes in the data bank including survey numbers. Several strips of land that needed to be in the data bank had not been included, nor had those that did not have a place in the data bank been excluded.
A certificate from the local Krishi Bhavan that the land is not included in the data bank for wetland and paddy fields has to be obtained before filing an application for land conversion at the office of the Revenue Divisional Officer. The Krishi Bhavan at Puthiyara is in charge of this certification in 11 villages (55 wards) under the Kozhikode Corporation.
The Krishi Bhavan used to issue the certificates until late April 2021 based on the draft of the data bank. However, the order of the Deputy Director (Agriculture) to use the published data bank in place of the draft has landed the officials at Krishi Bhavan in the soup as they found several mistakes in the published version. Hence, the Krishi Bhavan has stopped issuing certificates altogether much to the dismay of several people who are waiting for these certificates for land conversion and bank loans. The Agriculture Officer, in a letter, has requested the Mayor to correct the data bank as early as possible.
“This problem is prevalent only in the wards that come under Puthiyara Krishi Bhavan, and not in those wards that were attached to the corporation, under Elathur, Beypore, and Cheruvannur zones”, Ms. Arun said.
Ramesh Kumar, executive engineer of the corporation, said that it was a problem that occurred during data entry for the data bank. “We have over 2,000 applications requesting that some land be removed from the data bank. This has been completed. Now, only the additions are pending”, Mr. Kumar said. The corporation has appointed two new data entry operators for this purpose and discussions are in progress with the Agriculture Office for clarifications.
