Assam Government to Introduce Individual Land Pattas

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: In a major move to streamline land documents in Assam, the State Government is going to introduce the ‘single patta for single pattadar system’, besides linking land documents to Aadhaar cards so as to check forgeries. The government has also decided to act tough against officials delaying issuance of land documents for no rhyme or reason.

Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal chaired a meeting for updating land documents on Friday. He instructed the Revenue department to take a pilot project for updating land documents. It will be followed by a massive land document update exercise all over the State.

According to official sources, the existing joint patta system is the mother of a lot of land-related problems in the State. This system makes pattadars face numerous problems in receiving land tax by mouzadars. Area of land of each and every pattadar is not clearly spelt out in this system. Problems crop up while taking bank loans as daag and patta numbers are the same for a number of pattadars in the joint patta system. Many other problems also crop up while selling or purchasing such lands. Land documents linking with Aadhaar cards is to be done in phases as the issuance of Aadhaar cards is far from being over in the State.

Delaying issuance of land documents for no rhyme or reason is a common practice in the revenue circle offices in the State. Taking strong note of public grievance in delay in issue of land related documents beyond stipulated timeframe, Sonowal asked the department to bring into force advanced monitoring of applications submitted at circle offices. He directed them to introduce a centralized monitoring system to track the disposal and pendency rate of applications by circles concerned.

The Chief Minister also directed the department to carry out survey of non-cadastral villages in the State by adopting latest technology in a time-bound manner. Keeping in view that since 1960 fees against several revenue-related services have not been reviewed, the Chief Minister directed the department to examine possible avenues for enhancing land revenue collection in the State. He asked the department to undertake revaluation of the services and introduction of online collection of fees.

Underlining the need for capacity augmentation of circle officers and lot mondols, the Chief Minister instructed the department to conduct refresher courses and orientation programmes for them. He also asked the department to immediately notify the transfer policy of lot modols to realize better service delivery.

Minister of State for Revenue & DM Bhabesh Kalita, Chief Minister’s Legal Advisor Santanu Bharali, MLA Narayan Deka, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Sanjay Lohiya, Commissioner & Secretary of Revenue & DM Department Aruna Rajoria, Director of Land Records Madan Chandra Deka and several other senior officials of the department were present at the meeting.

Also Read: Land pattas distributed by Executive Member of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council