Staff crunch: 1 patwari handling MC's land records
Records pertaining to thousands of acres of land, belonging to the local municipal corporation, are being looked after by a single patwari who has been working on contract basis for the past 10 years.
Records pertaining to thousands of acres of land, belonging to the local municipal corporation, are being looked after by a single patwari who has been working on contract basis for the past 10 years.
Earlier, there were three patwaris working with the MC, but after all of them retired before 2004 the corporation appointed Baljinder Singh on contract basis.
Singh has been doing the work of three patwaris, one kanungo and one naib-tehsildar. "It becomes difficult for one person to do this tough job as the corporation has thousands of acres of land," Singh said.
"I am working here for the past 10 years. I have not been regularised despite the government policy that an employee who has worked for three years should be regularised," he said.
In MC, the patwari is responsible for all land-related work, including keeping a check on encroachments, maintaining record of khasra numbers and solving land disputes.
In case, somebody wants a no-objection certificate (NOC) or desires to get the building sketch (naksha) approved, the patwari has to visit the land and then he has to instruct the building department to issue NOC.
A senior official of the civic body stated that due to lack of patwaris, many people have illegally encroached upon government land and there is no one to take care of this aspect.
Shortage of patwaris is also delaying delivery of services to the visitors as many a time patwari is busy in some other work. Every day around 50 people visit the patwari office in connection with their work.
As per budget proposals passed by the corporation recently, the MC has two posts of patwari, one kanungo and one naib-tehsildar but all are vacant.
Gurmeet Singh, joint commissioner, admitted that it is really difficult for one patwari to manage huge land of the corporation. Moreover, one person is handling all the work for the past 10 years, he added.
"We have taken up the matter in the budget meeting and forwarded it to the government for appointing two patwaris, one kanungo and one naib-tehsildar. We hope that the government will accept the proposal," he said.