Hyderabad: The state government will take up a special drive to rectify errors in new electronic pattadar passbooks being issued to agriculture land owners across the state from March 10 as part of Rythu Bandhu scheme. Complaints are pouring in from all the districts pointing out errors in names, extent of land holding, location of land, survey numbers etc.
These errors are costing the farmers dearly as they are denied Rs 4,000 per acre cheques while in some other cases they are getting cheques for amount lesser than they actually entitled for. The government has directed revenue department to correct these errors by conducting a special drive in the last week of this month. Over 58 lakh new passbooks have been printed for distribution to land owners along with cheques, which started on May 10. About 32 lakh passbooks have been distributed till May 17, the deadline for the scheme.
However, with a backlog of 26 lakh passbooks, the government has decided to extend the distribution programme by one more week. The revenue department has set up a grievance cell in each of the distribution centres in over 10,000 villages to enable farmers to lodge complaints if any. The data obtained from districts revealed that 10 per cent of the passbooks distributed so far have errors.
Agriculture secretary C. Parthasarathi said, “There is no need for panic. These errors will be rectified by conducting a special drive and cheques will be issued to beneficiaries in the second phase.” Revenue secretary Ajay Mishra reviewed the issue with department officials and asked them to correct the errors in passbooks by taking up thorough verification of revenue records. The errors in passbooks and cheques have been leading to disputes at distribution centres.
Farmers are shocked to find some survey numbers missing from their passbooks due to which their land holding got reduced which resulted in them getting lower financial benefit from the government. In some other cases, the errors led to disputes between family members as survey numbers were exchanged between them changing the ownership and extent of land.
