A whopping 20% of revenue documents in the State are in a brittle condition. Acknowledging the status of the revenue records, Revenue Minister R. Ashok on Wednesday said efforts were being made to reconstruct these documents.
“About 20% of the documents are falling apart. They are all over 150 years old. We are trying to reconstruct the files and scanning of such documents in both Revenue and Land Survey Departments will be completed in six months,” said Mr. Ashok responding to a question in the Council.
He said the government was scanning land records since 2010, and nine types of documents were being scanned. “Over three crore documents have been scanned so far.” The Minister said that the scanned documents such as sketches and maps will be made available online for the public.
Earlier, Congress member S. Ravi raised the issue of the condition of land records and absence of a resurvey. “The indexing and cataloguing of files in the Revenue Department has not happened so far. These are very important documents. If they are lost and a land dispute arises, it will be difficult to end the dispute,” he said.
Further, Mr. Ravi said that though land survey has to be conducted once in 30 years, resurvey has not been done for over 100 years. “The last survey was done in 1860,” he said. Responding to this, Mr. Ashok said that currently drones are being used to survey, and that the government has taken a decision to conduct resurvey.
CCTV to monitor village accountants
To ensure accessibility of village accountants to the public, the State government will monitor their work through CCTV cameras. “Every village accountant has to be available to the public between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Their work will be monitored through the Deputy Commissioner’s office,” said Revenue Minister R. Ashok in response to members complaining about village accountants not being available to the public.
