The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Vijayawada News : Panel to be appointed for surplus land survey

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Friday, Nov 19, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada

Panel to be appointed for surplus land survey

By Our Special Correspondent

VIJAYAWADA, NOV. 18. Even as the efforts to distribute one lakh acres of land to the landless poor on January 26 are continuing, the Government has decided to appoint a commission to conduct a survey to ascertain the extent of surplus land available throughout the State.

"The land distribution programme will be a continuous one for which there is a need to identify the entire extent of land available," the Minister for Revenue, Dharmana Prasada Rao, has said.

Government committed

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, the Minister reiterated the Government's commitment to distribute every cent of available land among the landless poor and said that the programme was only a beginning. Once the distribution process was initiated, the Government would put all the details about the beneficiaries online to ensure transparency.

The Minister said that the Government would consider Left parties' plea to regularise lands distributed by them to the poor.

The district collectors had been empowered to issue pattas to those in occupation of such lands after verifying and ascertaining that they were genuinely poor.

"The district administration has already been asked to verify the genuineness of all such claims and take appropriate decision," he said.

Reminding that the decades-old land distribution process was started and implemented only by the Congress Governments that ruled the State, the Minister, however, expressed concern over the state of affairs in the Revenue Department, which had been totally neglected during the past one decade.

There was acute shortage of staff at field level to furnish land records, which led to piling up of litigations. "Though the Government was firm on ushering in reforms in the Revenue Department, it would take adequate care to ensure that the changes would not bring in `dictatorial' tendencies in the system.

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