UP govt to copy EC format to resolve 700,000 pending land dispute cases

Alarmed at the number of land disputes pending with the revenue courts in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Yogi Adityanath government will now replicate the format of the Election Commission (EC) to spot verify and cut pendency of such cases.

Over 700,000 cases are pending before about 2,333 state revenue courts at the courts of the naib tehsildar, tehsildar, collector, commissioner and Board of Revenue in UP. Land cases pending for over five years number almost 100,000 and the bulk of such cases pertain to Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Agra, Lucknow, Faizabad, and Azamgarh.

Recently, Chief Minister Adityanath had expressed concern over pendency of land cases and directed the board to take remedial measures to resolve such disputes. Now, the UP Revenue Board is gearing up to launch a three-month long state-wide special drive during January-March 2018 to resolve land disputes.  

Under the drive, the board would replicate the format of the EC for conducting spot visits, verification, and reconciliation of official records. A joint team of police and revenue officials would visit the respective villages with the case history to ascertain the genesis of the dispute and try to resolve land disputes on the spot.

Board Chairman Pravir Kumar said the success of the drive would be measured by the number of villages completely freed from land disputes.

Kumar had already issued stern warnings to five divisional commissioners in Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Agra, Aligarh, and Faizabad, besides eight district magistrates posted in Ghazipur, Mahoba, Gonda, Ambedkarnagar, Pratapgarh, Azamgarh, Ballia and Jalaun for old land disputes under their jurisdiction. He has warned officials of strict action against laxity in achieving the desired results.

On Friday, Kumar will hold a video conference to review the preparedness for the drive starting next month.

In its ongoing anti-land mafia drive, the Yogi government has partnered the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), for installing GPS-ready border pillars to demarcate all the revenue villages. There are about 109,000 revenue villages in UP and almost 850,000 border pillars are installed at village boundaries.

The government is working on a project to install GPS-verified border pillars for exact demarcation of village boundaries. These border pillars would map the exact latitude and longitude of these villages for future reference, records, and facilitating transactions, which would effectively prevent tampering with the records for possible forgeries and fraudulent sale deeds.

"This would help us wipe off almost 400,000 land-related cases currently pending in the various revenue courts of the state," Kumar had earlier told Business Standard.

At the same time, the board is allocating unique codes to individual plots, which would need to be quoted in land transfers or sale deeds. "The digitisation of land and revenue records is the most effective tool with regards to the anti-bhu mafia (anti-land mafia) campaign being spearheaded by the state government," Kumar added. 

The board has also created a Revenue Court case Computerised Management System (RCCMS) for transparency.