Indus Valley Times

By A K Sahoo

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 4: In a significant development, Odisha state revenue and disaster management department has written to all the district collectors stating that there has been no revision in settlement for the last 32 years while directing them to resolve the pending revision cases in time bound manner.

The revenue department informed that in many tahasils in Odisha, Records of Rights (RoRs) were finally published and issued to concerned land owners in the last settlement which was conducted between 1960s and 1990s and there have been no further revision settlement since then.

Therefore, these RoRs have the name of the ancestors of the present tenants and hence their eligibility in many welfare schemes such as PM-Kisan is not incontrovertible and often the actual tenants are subjected to elaborate documentation for not having their name in their RoR.

It is tedious for the present tenants to obtain agricultural inputs and formal credit from banks or banking institutions. Besides, obsolete entry in RoR results in disputes and collection of full revenue by Revenue Inspector manually and in e-Pauti portal is hindered, stated the department.

“Hence, you are requested to impress upon all field functionaries such as Tahasildars/ Additional Tahasildars to detect such un, partitioned land parcel cases in Camp Courts or otherwise and resolve such cases in time bound manner so as to reflect the ground reality in the RoR. This shall also be disseminated widely through Rajaswa Rath. Also, ADMs and Sub-Collectors shall be instructed to make a special drive to make this program a success. This may be treated as “Extremely Urgent”,” read the official letter.

Welcoming the decision of the Odisha government, retired collector Golaka Bihari Mangaraj said people need to understand that due to non-revision in the RoRs, they are getting deprived of many schemes and even bank loans.

Subrat Nanda, a lawyer of High Court of Orissa, said, “If the direction of the State government to collectors and DMs is taken into account and the same is ensured on a war footing, it will immensely benefit, especially the farmers.”