Sans infrastructure, new administrative units have failed to facilitate work

Arteev Sharma

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Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 27

Envisioned to take administration at the doorsteps of the people amid grand fanfare, the creation of 659 New Administrative Units (NAUs) has turned out to be a ‘messy affair’ in Jammu and Kashmir. People have been facing hardships in getting their work done due to shortage of infrastructure, manpower and non-shifting of complete official records.

In remote areas, situation is grimmer as the people are being made to move from new units to previous offices several times to simply get revenue papers of their land or other allied works.

The NAUs were created by the previous Omar Abdullah Government about two years ago after a high-level Cabinet Sub-Committee (CSC) had recommended it. The 659 NAUs comprised 46 new sub-divisions, 135 tehsils, 177 blocks and 301 niabats.

Apart from this, the state government has also remained non-committal on creation of 158 more new administration units which were also announced by the previous government two years ago after protests in different parts of the state.

“In fact, the people were happy with the previous system. The creation of new tehsil at Dansal has compounded the problems of the people. Earlier, they had to go to the deputy commissioner office complex, Jammu, where they could easily get their work done. Except more difficulties, nothing has changed on ground for us. The official record has not been shifted to Dansal which is still lying at Jammu while the people are made to visit Jammu office many a times on trivial matters,” Pappu Sharma, a resident of Panchayat Dhan in the Dansal block of Jammu district.

Ashwani Sharma, a local priest at Jandrah village, said, “The NAUs so far have been failed to serve the purpose for which these had been created. Leave aside the creation of more administrative units as promised by the government, the units, which have already been made functional, are virtually working on crutches. These units have been grappling with the main problem of infrastructure, manpower, paucity of funds and non-availability of official records”.

He said there was no purpose of creating these units if the government was unable to make them effective and public-oriented. “Many of these units are still operating from rented buildings having one or two rooms. There is no accountability of staff deployed there as the people seldom find tehsildar, naib tehsildars or patwaris in their respective offices,” he said.

At the new Lohai Malhar tehsil in Kathua district, the people are still forced to visit Billawar to get their work done. “The tehsil headquarters has been created a Macchedi, which is quite far away from Lohai, while all officers continue to work from Billawar. For us, Billawar is still our tehsil headquarters,” Sanjay Kumar, a resident of Lohai said.

“All the units, created by the state government on the recommendation of CSC, have been made temporarily functional through internal arrangements but these units are yet to be made fully functional. We have been facing shortage of staff and infrastructure in these institutions. We have not been able to refer the posts of patwaris to recruiting agencies because some amendments in the recruitment rules for these posts were to be made. The recommendations have been made to the Chief Minister and we are awaiting for the approval,” Mohammad Afzal, Secretary, State Revenue Department, told The Tribune.

He said no funds had been released for creation of infrastructure in these units so far. “We are yet to get funds under 14th Finance Commission for creating infrastructure in these units,” he added.