Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Jan 15: The land settlement exercise, which is of immense importance to bring permanent full stop to the land disputes, has virtually come to a grinding halt as all the employees engaged or recruited for this exclusive purpose have been divested of their job and deployed in the newly created administrative units.
Moreover, the creation of seven posts of Regional Directors of Land Records and Surveys has proved damp squib exercise as objective behind this move could not be achieved till date because of non-seriousness at various levels and lack of proper monitoring.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that for carrying out land settlement exercise a large number of technical employees were engaged or recruited by the State Government from time to time and Union Government, which was keen to get this exercise completed, started providing financial assistance to meet the salary component of such employees.
In this way, around 85 Prism-men/Settlement Assistants were engaged in Jammu region and around 150 in Kashmir province exclusively for land settlement work. Similarly, around 250 Patwaris and Girdawars were engaged for ETS (Electronic Total Station) exercise besides large number of Naib-Tehsildars and Tehsildars (Settlements).
Till recent past the services of all these technical employees were being utilized for the settlement exercise, which otherwise never picked up required momentum in the State for obvious reasons. However, with the passage of time even little focus started fading away and ETS Patwaris on being promoted as ETS Girdawars were posted in the Territorial Wing at the cost of settlement work, sources informed.
The severe dent was caused to the settlement exercise when Government divested all the Settlement Assistants and Prism-men of their primary job and got them posted in the newly created administrative units. “At present these technical employees are working on the non-technical posts in new administrative units thereby defeating the very purpose of their engagement from time to time”, sources regretted. Shockingly, salary of these Settlement Assistants and Prism-Men is being drawn from the Settlement Organization despite the fact that they are no more performing their basic duty.
Due to this, the land settlement exercise has virtually come to grinding halt despite the fact that completion of this work is imperative to put a full stop on the land disputes for which Jammu and Kashmir is known for, they said. “Non-serious approach towards this vital aspect is notwithstanding the fact that land dispute cases in different courts across the State are burgeoning with every passing day”, sources further said.
“The fact that land disputes are also one of the major contributors to the crime graph has also been completely ignored by those who created stumbling block in the settlement exercise from time to time”, they further regretted.
Not only this, even creation of seven posts of Regional Directors of Land Records and Surveys in the month of August 2013 has failed to yield any substantial progress on ground. At the time of creation of these posts, the State Cabinet was informed that this initiative would give required impetus to the settlement exercise but situation is very contrary, sources said.
This can be gauged from the fact that post of Regional Director, Land Records and Surveys for Rajouri-Poonch has been lying vacant since August last year. The post fell vacant after Farooq Ahmad Shah, the then Regional Director, Rajouri was transferred and posted as Deputy Commissioner Ramban.
Similarly, settlement work has not been completed even in one village by the Regional Directors for Udhampur-Reasi districts and Chenab valley (districts of Ramban, Doda and Kishtwar), sources informed. At the time of creation of these posts it was mentioned that Regional Directors would not be frequently transferred so that they could lay required focus on settlement work but some of the Regional Directors in Kashmir valley were transferred within months of their posting.
“Due to lack of seriousness the experiment of creating seven Regional Directors of Land Records and Surveys has failed to mark any change and land disputes continue to galore in the absence of settlement exercise”, sources said, adding actually land settlement never remained priority of successive Governments in Jammu and Kashmir and the only beneficiary of this approach was land mafia.
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