Hyderabad: Erroneous revenue records and land disputes are fuelling corruption in the revenue department.
Revenue topped all other departments in corruption-related complaints in Telangana. The government received 6,000 complaints in 2015; Of them, 35 per cent were against revenue staff.
People complained that there is a price chart for every service in revenue offices. They need to bribe anything between Rs 2,000 and Rs10,000.
The state government had set up a toll free number in January 2015 to enable people to lodge complaints against corrupt staff.
While the revenue department stood first with 1,900 complaints, it was followed by police department (500), panchayat raj and rural development (400), medical and health (300), electricity (200) and education (175).
In the revenue department, the complaints were lodged against all levels of staff from village revenue officer to divisional officer.
People complained that they need to bribe up to Rs10,000 for mutation, Rs 2,000 for correcting errors in land records, Rs 5,000 per acre for issuing pattadar passbook, Rs 4,000 to obtain title deed in rural areas and Rs 5,000 in urban areas, Rs 5,000 per acre for land survey, Rs 1,000 to obtain copies of pahaani, Rs 10,000 to obtain NOC under NALA Act, Rs 15,000 to obtain copies of land boundary dispute, '20,000 for land value certificate etc.
This is because there are no proper land records with the department giving scope for land disputes and forcing people to pay bribes to correct records and resolve disputes.
“Normally, land survey has to be conducted every 30 years. But in Telangana, the last land survey was done before India’s Independence in the 1940s. With this, around 20 per cent of total agriculture lands in the state have been stuck in disputes. Thousands of land dispute cases are pending in courts for decades. If re-survey is done and records corrected, the corruption would automatically come down. We plan to take up re-survey this year,” said Mohd Mahmood Ali, Deputy CM holding the revenue portfolio.
