The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Anantapur News : MRO's innovative method to detect fake patta passbooks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 23, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Anantapur

MRO's innovative method to detect fake patta passbooks

By Our Staff Reporter

ANANTAPUR, JULY 22. An ambitious Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO) in the district has evolved a fool-proof method to overcome the menace of fake pattadar passbooks created by greedy farmers to get the benefits like crop loans, crop insurance or input subsidy, subsidised seed among others illegally, denying them to the genuine needy ryots.

The MRO of Talupula mandal, C.K. Devaraja Rao, has prepared the lists of all farmers in 11 revenue villages and 109 hamlets in the mandal with the details of their land-holding (extent of land) and the survey numbers.

The details were prepared as per the proforma under 1A (the farmers having pattadar passbook and residing and having land in the same village), 1B (the farmers having pattadar passbook, residing in one village and having land in another village) and the farmers not having pattadar passbooks along with their photographs. It took the MRO about one month to prepare the data.

Fake passbooks detected

With the help of innovative data the officials had detected about 300 fake pattadar passbooks during the ongoing distribution of subsidised seed groundnut and redgram seed so far. The innovative effort of the MRO would prevent irregularities, if any, in the disbursement of input subsidy to the farmers who had not insured their crop in kharif 2003 and the farmers who had received less than Rs. 1,250 crop insurance claim per hectare.

Explaining about a few cases detected the MRO stated that one Avula Vivekananda Reddy of Ganjivaripalli village had some how secured the passbook of a farmer of Vepamanupeta, which was issued in 1996 with passbook No. 381657 and patta no. 251 (1B) with land holding in two survey numbers. The canny farmer removed the photograph of the original farmer, fixed his photograph in its place, erased the name and other details with the help of a blade and written his name, affixed the fake seal of MRO. He had also shown the land-holding as 18.23 acres in seven survey numbers and had also taken crop loans from bank.

Misuse of passbook

Similarly, Kamalapuram Sanjeeva Reddy had misused the passbook originally belonging to Avula Sivappa.

In Lakkasamudram village, Girram Ramanna and Girram Ramanjaneyulu had misused the passbook of Girram Ganganna. All such fake passbooks were recommended for cancellation to the RDO so that they could be issued afresh to the original farmers.

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MRO's innovative method to detect fake patta passbooks