Staff shortage: Kangra revenue cases drag on for decades

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, January 22

Shortage of staff is hampering revenue work in Kangra district. People have been waiting for the resolution of land division and demarcation cases.

RM Sharma, a resident of Kanol village in Dhaliara, is waiting for the past 14 years to get his ancestral land divided. Sharma says that he had moved an application for the division of his ancestral land about 14 years ago. However, the tehsildar has not given orders in the case. The government should set a time limit for revenue officials to decide such cases.

Revenue officials say that an acute shortage of revenue officials is leading to delay in the settlement of cases. About 300 posts of patwari are vacant in the district. The government had started the process of recruitment but was stalled after the Himachal High Court ordered an inquiry into it.

Deputy Commissioner Rakesh Prajapati says that efforts are being made to settle the cases of land demarcation in a time-bound manner. Regarding the settlement of land division cases, he says that most of the cases are delayed due to a dispute among the co-sharers of land.

Sources say that there are disputes in lower Himachal regions, as land settlement has not yet been completed by the Revenue Department, leading to anomalies in records.

The land settlement work in the state from Chamba district was started in 1952. It has been 56 years since then, but the work is yet to be completed. It is still going on in many districts.

A proposal has also been mooted to use the new technology procured by the settlement office in Dharamsala that caters to the northern region of the state. The settlement office here has procured total solutions machines to carry out the work.