Removal of encroachments

Jammu, Jan 12: Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar, Wednesday directed the Revenue department to create a dashboard for continuous and effective monitoring of removal of encroachments on government land.
He asked them to devise a mechanism under which no retrieved patch of land is re-encroached advising them to prioritize the commercial chunks of land to be retrieved first followed by others. He asked them to red flag any instance of new encroachment or re-encroachment by fixing responsibility down the line showing no laxity in taking action against the responsible.
Advisor made these remarks while assessing the performance of Revenue department in a meeting held here.
The meeting was attended by Commissioner Secretary, Revenue; Custodian General; IG Registrations, Jammu and other officers of the department while Divisional Commissioners participated through video conferencing.
Advisor exhorted upon the officers to redress all grievances satisfactorily being fair, responsive and just. ‘The department is the primary interface of governance for the public so they have to be accessible to them every time’, he asked them. He advised them to make all their services online so that the waiting period for public is drastically reduced.
He enjoined upon the officers to work out requirements of infrastructure and tools for offering IT enabled services to general public. He assured them that most of their requirements would be fulfilled on priority.
Advisor also enquired about the process of digitization of land records, expunging of illegal entries, reconstructing the missing records afresh and progress of revenue courts. He called for a comprehensive report on all the cases pending in their courts besides the time line showing progress registered, so far.
In his presentation, Commissioner Secretary informed the Advisor that 371901.1 kanal of state, 110515.8 kanal of Kacharai and 1314.11 kanal of common land has been retrieved from encroachers till date.
The meeting was further informed that digitization of land records for Srinagar and Jammu is in final stage and slated to be completed in coming February. It was also said that the work on updation of Jamabandis in remaining districts is going to be completed in this month followed by digitization of the same immediately in a decentralized manner.
Regarding the settlement and digital survey of all 6850 revenue villages, it was said that the draft survey manual has been prepared and the project management module is also under process. They also revealed that use of CORS and Drone/DGPS technology would be used for digital survey of these villages.
The meeting also dealt in detail with the proposed roadmap for online services to get revenue extracts besides integration of mutation and registration system for real-time updation of revenue records without any extra encumbrance.
The meeting was apprised that with addition of about 127 slots a week in favour of each Sub-Registrar the process of registration of properties has become quick and easy. It was informed that around 60% increase in registration of properties through these offices has been made this year as compared to previous year. The registrations in 2021 were calculated at 65626 in contrast to only 39039 registrations made in 2020.
Moreover, it was informed that initiatives like e-office, change of land use, JKNGDRS customization have been implemented and reforms like revenue court cases information and monitoring system, land pass books, property cards, land grant rules are in process and shortly being made available to public for their general ease and advantage.