Patna: Amid prevailing suspense over the land survey in the state, minister of revenue and land reforms Dilip Kumar Jaiswal on Wednesday informed the legislative council that the state govt was completing the scanning and digitisation of all ‘khatiyans’ to preserve the survey ‘khatiyans’ of all revenue villages.
Responding to a short-notice question by MLC Sanjay Kumar Singh, the minister said, “The state govt is undertaking the scanning and digitisation of all ‘khatiyans’ to preserve the survey ‘khatiyans’ of all revenue villages.” He said so far, scanning of 15 crore pages of such land records was done, adding, “The CM has told me that the survey has to be done at any cost.”
Highlighting various misgivings gripping the minds of landholders in view of the survey, Jaiswal said the people need not worry about the missing land papers as they would be given plenty of time to arrange for them. Stating the villagers need not make rounds of the revenue offices for land records, the minister said they could provide any of the papers out of 15 options such as cathedral survey paper, revenue dept receipts, and ‘Basgit parcha’. He said 47 lakh families have submitted self-declarations online to the department.
“We know the people have been facing problems, but we have come up with a solution for some 90%of cases,” Jaiswal said, discouraging the villagers from making rounds of govt offices.
He also warned of stern action against the employees, if any complaint was received against them. “We will act within 72 hours once a complaint is received,” he said.
Describing the land survey as the dream of CM Nitish Kumar, the minister said the completion of the survey would save the precious time of the police and the court, which is wasted in settling land disputes. “Right now, 37% of cases registered with the police stations are related to land disputes. If it is completed, it will save precious time of both the police and the court,” Jaiswal said.
He also wondered about the way states like West Bengal and Odisha have conducted the survey, but Bihar still lags behind. “The CM has been working in this direction since 2012. First, he got conducted an aerial survey after which he got the map prepared. Then he made the appointment of 10,000 special survey ‘amins’ before setting the process in motion,” he said.