Telangana Government in piquant situation over village revenue mechanism after issue of draft of new RoR Act

Telangana Government faces challenges in implementing new RoR Act, requiring village-level revenue administration mechanism and addressing VRO/VRA concerns.

The Telangana Government appears to be landed in a piquant situation since putting draft legislation containing salient features of the proposed Record of Rights (RoR) Act in the public domain.

A majority of the provisions in the proposed Act mandate revenue administration mechanism at the village level. Main features of the new RoR Act include provisions for adjudication of Part-B cases of Dharani portal, covering as many as 18 lakh acres and separate record of rights for abadi (non-agricultural) lands at the village level.

These functions will require presence of the Revenue Department personnel at the village level for effective preparation of the RoR and addressing the concerns raised by the farmers and landowners, but there is no such mechanism existing at present. Though the Village Revenue Officers system was existing since long for addressing matters at the grass root level, the previous BRS Government scrapped it on the pretext of corruption and irregularities.

The VROs were since then accommodated in several other Departments where they were reportedly facing discomfort in discharge of new duties assigned to them without proper training. The Government incorporated provisions for issue of temporary Bhudhar cards, on the lines of Aadhaar, envisaging convergence of all land related transaction on to a single platform in the new Act.

The Bhudar cards would be issued after verifying existing land records as it would enable the Government to identify errors in Dharani, according to the draft RoR Act. In addition, there is a provision for regularisation of ‘sada bainamas’ (transactions on plain paper) issued before June 2, 2014, the State formation day.

The draft RoR said there was no provision to link village records to RoR in the previous legislation enacted in 2020 and it was accordingly decided to ensure that entries would be made in pahani based on the RoR which inevitable require mechanism at the village level.

The Government is said to be working out modalities for setting up an effective mechanism at the ground level to address the issues arising on account of Dharani and abolition of the VRO and Village Revenue Assistants (VRA) system. The VROs and VRAs on their part have been submitting representations at various levels for restoration of the system so that they could effectively discharge their duties.