The administration has introduced numerous reforms in the Revenue Department, with the most notable and people-friendly change being the digitalization of revenue records. This step has been widely appreciated, as it has significantly reduced the need for people to visit offices or chase officials for documents like income certificates or fards.
Recently, digitalized jamabandies (land records) for each village in J&K were made available online. However, when individuals attempt to access their land records on the portal, they often face challenges. The primary reasons for these issues are either errors in data entry or the lack of proper training among operators at Common Service Centres (CSCs).
Many operators are not adequately skilled, leading to errors or an inability to retrieve records. Consequently, people are often directed to record rooms for older records, only to discover that their records are either incorrect or missing from the portal.
The government has now issued orders to rectify these jamabandies and make them error-free within a stipulated timeframe. However, many individuals are finding that their mutations (recorded changes in ownership) are not incorporated into the digitalized records. While newly attested mutations are expected to be added, there are cases of decades-old mutations that remain absent. As a result, people are frequently asked to obtain certified copies of these mutations from record rooms to have them incorporated into the revenue records.
The rectification process has begun under the supervision of patwaris, with claims that it will be completed within a week. However, this raises an important question: why not allocate at least one month per village for rectification and mandate verification of the digitalized records against older records? Moreover, there are concerns that the initial digitalization process did not undergo proper verification by concerned authorities, who cited insufficient time for the task. To ensure accuracy, the authorities must actively monitor the rectification process instead of relying solely on undertakings from field officials.
A significant issue with the digitalized jamabandies lies in the tenancy column. Many entries in this column do not match the older records. The Revenue Department has made it mandatory for the tenancy column to align with the ownership (milikiyat) column. However, this requirement was not followed earlier, as patwaris were prohibited from modifying cultivation column entries. As a result, outdated entries from the 1980s still appear in the current records.
Although Girdawar Quanoongos have the authority to make these changes, they have often shown little interest in addressing these discrepancies. If they had exercised diligence and professional responsibility, many of these errors could have been rectified. For instance, it became a routine practice where a person listed as the landowner in the ownership column, but not in the tenancy column, was allowed to alienate or mortgage the land. Such cases were noted in the footnotes of revenue extracts, particularly jamabandi extracts, but the tenancy column remained uncorrected.
With the digitalized jamabandies now frozen, no changes can be made until the rectification process is completed. Despite the completion of rectification files, these corrections have not yet been reflected in the digitalized records, causing immense inconvenience to the general public.
There is an urgent need to implement a citizen-friendly program to simplify the process of updating tenancy entries in the digitalized jamabandies. Additionally, mutations attested after the digitalized jamabandies were created, or older mutations not yet reflected in the records, should be promptly incorporated.
The author is a Patwari at the Tehsil Office, Qazigund.
Comments are closed.