Erring officials being taken to task ; land related plaints have come down sharply: Dy CM

Deputy CM Vijay Kumar Sinha announced measures to address land-related issues, reprimanding lax officials and tackling the land and sand mafia.

Deputy chief minister-cum-revenue minister Vijay Kumar Sinha on Wednesday said the revenue and land reforms department had started pulling up erring officials having lackadaisical attitude to address discrepancies in land-related matters.

Bihar Deputy CM and Revenue & Land Reforms Minister Vijay Sinha and others releasing compendium during a press conference at Secretariat in Patna, Wednesday (SANTOSH KUMAR/HT)

“We are doing the treatment of erring officials through ‘doses’ in small quantities so that they improve their way of working. We believe in doing treatment in a slow manner as giving a strong dose can have detrimental effect,” Sinha said, metaphorically indicating how erring officials were being reprimanded and taken to task for not addressing discrepancies and anomalies in mitigating land-related matters.

Sinha also emphasised that he knew how to handle the land and sand mafia and they would not be spared. “We are soon going to come up with stricter rules to tackle the sand mafia. We also have the ‘treatment’ for land mafia and they would be not spared. We are also acting tough with field officers found to be lax in their work and doing close monitoring of all circle offices and block offices,” the minister said.

Addressing a presser of revenue and land reforms department, Sinha also shared his experience during the ongoing Jan Kalyan Samvad in districts, stating that it was quite a revelation as how people in rural areas were still grappling with complaints like discrepancies in mutation, parimarjan plus (the online process for correction of errors in land records digitised) and also land dispute matters of various kinds.

The ongoing Jan Kalyan Samvad is being organised by the department in various districts where the revenue minister, top department officials are interacting with general people to address land-related issues.

“We have already ordered that people who give false papers for mutation or settling land dispute matters should be taken to task. We have asked officials to register FIRs in relevant sections against such people who give false papers to settle land related matters and harass their opposite parties especially in matters of mutation and other disputes,” said Sinha.

The dy CM also released the new compendium carrying circulars and provisions of the revenue and land reforms department to facilitate officers and revenue staff in the field to understand the land related provisions more clearly so that they could take swift decisions on pending land related complaints received at the offices of circle officers (COs).

The compendium carrying circulars and rules issued from 2003 to 2023 has four volumes including circulars related to khas mahal land, land acquisition, settlement and public land encroachment along with other subjects of the revenue department like mutation, Jamabandi and land ceiling.

“ We feel, this compendium would go a long way in helping the revenue officials to discharge their duties by adhering to various circulars, rules and provisions issued by the department in the last many years. It’s a good initiative of the department to help officials in knowing their powers and addressing land related matters in a decisive manner,” Sinha said.

Sinha also highlighted that recent initiatives by the department to speed up disposal of land related complaints had started showing positive results be it concerning mutation, Parimarjan plus and measurement of land, “We are hopeful that by March 31st , the number of application in Parimarjan plus and other complaints of land related matters would come down through faster disposal. The positive results would be visible,” the minister said.

Besides, the deputy CM also mentioned how the revenue department was working in tandem with the agriculture department to link the land records of farmers so that they could be provided digital identity cards as part of the ongoing initiative of the agriculture department to provide IDs to two crore farmers to enable faster disbursement of incentives under various farm schemes including PM-KISAN scheme.