The big bubbles of corruption in the revenue department UT Jammu (Jammu and Kashmir)!

By: M S Nazki /ANN DESK

In Sub division Mendhar complaints by the people are many but the problem is that no one listens and the reasons are profound! Money is one segment wher revenue officials trip over! In Mendhar several have because corruption in the revenue system is holistic!

‘At times there’s something so precise and mathematically chilling about corruption. Tehsil Mendhar is a massive sphere of the same no one is checking’!

*- Either the Revenue Officers knows nothing or he knows everything. The latter seems a very obvious thing but the most likely affirmation!

-‘Some ideas are brilliant but many times they are not implemented at official level in various Tehsil of UT Jammu! Why it is not done is not known but how it happens is well known all the way!

-‘Tehsil Mendhar is full of corrupt people and lower level for example the Patwaris Girdawars and include in these the Revenue officials! For them money matters and not sincerity! Who better than Patwari Rashpal Singh Jamwal Eahul or the erstwhile one Javed knows it! Things have happened in the present and they could have been checked, they were not but at least they should be because the old rigmarole continues!’

-‘It is nice that the Deputy Commissioners in Districts of Jammu have been deputed to carry out the checks of various lands but are they (I mean the DC’s sure as to which land is of what Qism. Is it state, JDA, temple, JDA Choi, Khad state Talab, graveyard or Ghaas Charai, forest for that matter of fact! Obviously they will not be because the documentation is all in Urdu and most of the DC’s know a fig about them! It is only the translations that matter and the translations from the mouth pieces of lower revenue officials can never be correct and it is there that the seeds of corruption are sown!’

-‘Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted with a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one’s personal gain. Corruption may involve many activities which include bribery and embezzlement, and it may also involve practices which are legal in many countries. Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain. Corruption is most common in kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco-states, and mafia states.’

-‘The Revenue officials loot public in Mendhar and that iswith confirmation that I’m making’.

-‘some agent’s of revenue officials are working in a revenue complex in Mendhar and they are doing under the counter moves. This the Revenue Officers have to look into but the same is not happening. It never did. The previous Revenue Officer knew a lot but did nothing. Perhaps his mouth too was strapped with stirrups of money by the land mafia!’

 

 

Making. Files of different Categories like Pahari, Schedule Tribes, Other Backward classes, domiciles, Economic weaker classes, Scheduled castes, unmarried etc are good things for digitization of lands but what are the agents doing in Tehsil Mendhar? Obviously trying to make money at the cost of the poor and those who are a bit lost in this fast moving world!

Time and again we have said that a system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people. The revenue department of UT Jammu and Kashmir is immensely profit driven and the examples are many! The state lands have been encroached by the land mafia and it is the state officials who have been the major instruments in doing so! Agreed that the Lt. Governor has taken some great steps in eradicating corruption but it’s the lower staff that is still creating the mess! Indeed the Div Com too wants to get on with the job and thus has constituted teams to be headed by the DC’s and other officials to check out the status of various lands. The idea is a superb one but as I earlier mentioned with loopholes because there exist a number of indicators and tools that have been developed which can measure different forms of corruption with increasing accuracy and the most feasible one is checking the original documents and matching them with the present ones! The Khewats, Latthas, Pattas all come into existence! Gole Gujral and various DC offices in Jammu Division have those documents! The loop holes are as follows:

The same questions I will be asking time and again and here is the whole set of the same again: Do the DC’s exactly know as to what land is what? More importantly the Qism (Type)? While checking out they would be briefed by the revenue officials of the District they are checking out? Would they be taking them on the face value as to what they are telling? More importantly, are they correct or giving out details that are manipulated? The land details should be known as I mentioned above, especially the Qisms? The idea is great but this kink is disturbing and hence the whole exercise may again be futile? Thus a stricter action needs to be taken against the revenue guard sitting in various Tehsils who simply do not move before money is stuffed into their mouth pieces! This is a request to the Lt. Governor UT J&K to get the Anti Corruption on a fast mode action and the time has arrived?

A few more are in the awaiting and they go as follows:

*Why is it that corruption cannot be checked in the UT Jammu and Kashmir revenue department? In Sub Division Mendhar It is a full blown affair and the administration sleeps over it but why?

* This is despite the fact that complaints have been made to everyone who is directly concerned with the revenue I mean the higher officialdom!

* In fact the complaints have been made to the top i.e. Lt. Governor UT Jammu and Kashmir but action is still awaited!

Hopefully it would be taken soon because it is the poor who suffer in this complex geometric matrix!

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. That is what the agents Patwaris, Girdawars, Revenue officials and could be the higher ups know about and thus the officialdom of Tehsil mendhar is swimming in the stinking pool of corruption!