THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Governor P. Sathasivam bit off the modifier of a sentence and swallowed another one whole during his speech in the Assembly, which he read out from an official text, on Monday. The modifier had indicted certain ‘communal outfits’, and the sentence he refused to utter had put the Centre in a bad light. The written text said: “There has not been any instance of communal riot in our state despite the plotting by certain communal outfits.” Mr Sathasivam avoided the modifier ‘despite the plotting by certain ‘communal outfits’, as if he disapproved of the suggestion that there was a conspiracy to stoke communal tension.
But the sentence that came next, which had a strong reference to the Centre’s authoritarian ways, he just passed over. Here is the sentence: “We are also perturbed by the tendency of the Central Government to roughshod the best traditions of co-operative federalism by bypassing the State Government and directly dealing with the district authorities.” The sentence alluded to the State’s resentment at the Centre’s frequent attempts to encroach into the state’s power. It had happened with demonetisation, especially in the way the Centre dealt with cooperative banks, and then with GST.
“Technically, the Governor is doing his customary duty of being the mouthpiece of the government in power. There could be certain paragraphs or sentences that he might sent back for clarification or deletion. But if the government insists on retaining them, the Governor has no choice but to go with it,” a senior Legislative Assembly official said. “In this case he has either purposefully or accidentally left out certain words. But in the Legislative Assembly records, it will be the written text that will be used as the Governor’s speech,” he added. Nonetheless, the Governor did not omit other sentences that blamed the Centre for the state's fiscal misfortune.
Private player for digi resurvey
The State Government will hand over the digital resurvey of land to private land survey agencies, a decision that Survey Department’s staff organisations have termed “provocative”. “Considering the importance of land, my government proposes to complete digital survey in all 1664 villages in the state by outsourcing the digital survey to competent agencies,” Governor P Sathasivam said in his address to the Assembly on Monday. ‘Competent agencies’, euphemism for private parties, will do the digital resurvey while the Survey Department will restrict itself to supervision. As it stands, digital survey has been completed only in 10 villages in Kasargod. The process is on in 26 other villages across the state, the work progress ranging from 0% to 80%.
Top Survey Department sources said that move to rope in private agencies reflected the government’s urgency to complete the resurvey of the state in within three years. “With inadequate staff at the Department’s command, it is impossible to complete the resurvey in the stipulated time,” a top Survey official said. The Department has 1680 surveyors but more than half are unavailable for resurvey work. “They are allotted to special survey work related to major development projects, say a national highway or railway or airport project, or acquisition or various encroachment-related purposes,” the official said. This month, for instance, the Department has just 605 surveyors for the entire state. Certain districts like Pathanamthitta and Wayanad have just seven and 15 surveyors respectively.
On an average it takes 30 surveyors, not taking into account draughtsmen and supervisors, six months to resurvey a village that spreads over 1000 hectares. In districts like Wayanad, Idukki, Pathanthitta, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram, an average village is more than 3000 hectares. Take for instance Nenmeni village in Wayanad, one of the 26 where resurvey is on, and which is more than 3000 hectares. However, the Department could manage to get only 15 surveyors to work there. “The work will take more than a year,” the official said. The re-survey proceedings had started way back in 1965.
