Started in 1952, land settlement scheme still lingers on in state

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, December 26

The land settlement work in the state had started in 1952 from Chamba district. Since then, but the work is yet to be completed in the entire state. The work is still going on in many districts, including Harmirpur, Kullu and Una.

A proposal was also mooted for use of the new technology procured by the settlement office at Dharamsala that caters to northern region of the state. The settlement office here has procured total solution machines of Nikon for carrying out the settlement work. However, even these machines have not been able to speed up the work that has been lingering for the past more than five decades now.

The work of settlement is so slow that in revenue papers a village of Una district is still part of Punjab. Lal Singhi village that is located just on the outskirts of Una district headquarters as per the revenue papers (farads) issued even today is part of Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. The Revenue Department officials have not been able to complete the settlement of the village that comprises of just about 4,000 kanal land. People of the village have been bearing the burnt for it as they have not been able to divide their ancestral properties due to pending settlement work.

Earlier, officials of the Revenue Department used calibrated iron chains or ropes for carrying out the measurements in field. The system was time consuming and prone to errors. The revenue officials used to carry chains to the field and required manual labour to carry out the measurements.

The new total solutions machine use infrared technology to carry out the measurements. Officials of the Revenue Department while talking to The Tribune said that the present machine can be installed at one point. The measurements of all the visible points can be taken from the machine by just carrying the prism to other points. In addition to that the measurements taken by the machine are accurate up to millimeter level.

The officials here maintained that the work that was done earlier in two months can now be completed in just two days.

At present the north zone settlement office at Dharamsala has just two such machines. These machines have been put to use in Dharamsala and Kullu districts.

Presently the people have to travel from Kullu, Una and Hamirpur districts to Dharamsala to get copies of ‘Musavi’s’ (basic survey reports of settlement department). In Madhya Pradesh the government has created copies of Masavi’s and given them to book sellers for sale in respective areas. The advantage of the scheme is that the people get record at their door steps rather than wasting time and money on travelling to settlement offices to fetch records.

The proposal to set up similar system has also been sent to the government by the settlement office Dharamsala. However, the government is yet to act on the system.

The pending settlement work is also leading to increase of litigations in revenue cases in lower Himachal. There are about 4,000 pending revenue cases in the court of Division Commissioner Dharamsala. Many of these cases have been pending for more than a decade.

The people are facing problems in land partition and demarcation cases due to lack of proper records and shortage of staff. The cases of land partition in many cases have been pending for the past many years.