Students worst sufferers as authorities sit on requests

 

Students are the worst affected as they are not in a position to apply for scholarships, fee reimbursements, admissions etc. 

The revenue department offers 47 citizen services which include issuing important land documents like mutation, pattadar passbooks etc. Lakhs of these applications have piled up in the MRO offices with officials keeping them pending; they say they are busy with other works like verification of beneficiaries for land regularisation scheme, social security pensions, ration cards etc.

 

The trouble started in July 2014 with the TS government deciding to conduct the “Intensive Household Survey” in August last year in the state on a single day. The entire revenue department staff was engaged in these duties — processing of survey data of lakhs of households — for three months, from August to October. Then came pensions for which over 30 lakh applications were received. The TS government cancelled all existing pensions and asked people to apply afresh and directed revenue officials to take up ground-level verifications of each and every applicant to determine their eligibility.

 

In the meantime, the TS government started the process of issuing new ration cards with the TS logo and over 90 lakh applications were received. For this too, the revenue officials were asked to take up verifications of each household that applied for cards.

 

Though the process for pensions and ration cards was launched in October last year, it’s still going on. While pensions are being distributed to beneficiaries, the issuance of ration cards is yet to begin. 

To make matters worse, the TS government came up with the LRS in January 2015, for which over three lakh applications were received. Not surprisingly, revenue staff were deployed to take up ground-level verifications of each and every plot to ensure that only those lands on which houses existed were regularised.

 

Currently, the department officials are busy verifying LRS applications with the government fixing a deadline of June 2, on TS formation day, to distribute LRS pattas. These activities have left the revenue staff with no time to process applications for issuing important certificates, and lakhs of applications are piled up in all the ten districts. In Karimnagar alone, the pendency is pegged at three lakh, followed by Warangal — two lakh, Nizamabad — 1.75 lakh, Adilabad — 1.25 lakh, Nalgonda — 1.05 lakh, Mahabubnagar — 1 lakh etc.

 

“Revenue staff are facing the ire of the public for no fault of theirs. The government has been engaging revenue staff for verification duties since September last year. Though the government is receiving large-scale complaints over the delay in issuing important certificates to people, no action has been initiated so far to resolve this issue. This is often leading to quarrels between the public and revenue staff at MRO offices. The instances of people attacking revenue staff for delaying certificates are on the rise, “ said Mr Lachi Reddy, president, TS Tahsildars’ Association.

 

The officials are now planning to launch a statewide agitation demanding the government to not over-burden them with taking up verifications of applicants for all schemes simultaneously.