The Gujarat government will be extending the deadline for the Land Owners to file applications over their issues with the surveys and Re-Survey, giving them more time to file their applications till December 2022, it announced on Wednesday.
The state government has extended the deadline three times before, as well. It has led to undue delay in the final land survey. Gujarat is the first state to come up with such a detailed land survey.
Gujarat Revenue Minister Rajendra Trivedi said, “The Gujarat government has decided to extend the deadline for the grievances if any from the land owners regarding the survey carried out. Now we will be accepting such grievances and applications till December 2022. The deadline for the resurvey grievances was in 2016, which we have extended.”
“We will not promulgate the records finally until all the complaints are disposed of. We will make sure that not a single one of landholders is meted out injustice and none of the farmers is dissatisfied,” added the state Revenue Minister.
While talking about the utilization of the technology in conducting the survey, Trivedi said, “Gujarat is the only state in the country that has such a point to point survey carried out for land mapping. Utilizing modern technologies and methods like Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) and Electronic Total System (ETS), we have prepared digital mapping of the land.”
“To bring transparency in the procedure, the farmers and the land holders are apprised about the digitally mapped land and for that a time of thirty days these records are accessible at the Gram Panchayat offices for all to see before the promulgation,” he added.
Trivedi informed that there were a total of 95 lakh survey numbers in Gujarat but they had only received 5.28 lakh grievances applications which are about five per cent of the total survey numbers. “Out of that 5.28 lakh, for the 4.13 lakh applications, procedures are on, many have finished,” added Trivedi.
“For the remaining over one lakh applications, we have set our target to dispose of around forty thousand applications and we are doing that as a drive. For this procedure to be carried out, we have deployed 96 surveyors. 300 Rovers have also been deployed to assist the mapping,” stated Trivedi.
The Minister informed that there were 10 districts where the maximum number of complaints from farmers and land holders were received – Banaskantha – 20,187, Mehsana – 19,384, Devbhumi Dwarka – 14,947, Jamnagar – 13,283, Surendranagar – 7,173, Sabarkantha – 6,727, Aravalli – 5,661, Valsad – 5,249, Navsari – 4,514 and Junagarh – 4,024.
The Land resurvey was initiated in 2014. Since, then the state government has had to extend the deadline frequently to date due to thousands of complaints from land holders, especially the farmers.
The government has been receiving backlash from farmers across the state. Lots of discrepancies were found between the actual ground mapping and satellite imagery conducted by a Hyderabad-based private firm. There were also complaints of lapses in the official process to be followed. All these complaints had put the state government on a back foot.
The provisions of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code requires the state to carry out resurvey at an interval of 30 years to recalculate assessment on agricultural land. But, looking at the negligible amount of land revenue and to the benefit of land holders, the Gujarat Government has not revised the revenue to be levied on agricultural land and has suspended the collection of land revenue since the year 1997.
Under National Land Records Modernization Programme (NLRMP), Gujarat is playing a leading role in carrying out resurvey of land and initially it was planned to complete resurvey in the entire state by 2015 using sophisticated and latest land survey technologies to prepare digitized records of all agriculture land.
Gujarat Govt extends deadline for Resurvey grievance applications till December 2022
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