Even as the Gujarat government officially unveiled the integrated online revenue applications (iORA) 2.0 system, claimed to be the first of its kind in the country, which brings nineteen services under the revenue department online, facts have come to light it is rocked by major glitches.
Operational since 2017, when the state government came up with GPS-integrated maps in order to identify land titles, a right to information (RTI) plea suggests, farmers are facing major hurdles when they seek any records of their land titles, needed in order to make any major real estate deals in the highly industrialised state.
Saleem Patel of the Prakruti Suraksha Mandal, an environmental NGO in Ankaleshwar, has found that ever since the GSP-integrated maps were floated in 2017, in Bharuch district of South Gujarat alone, farmers have made as many as 5,113 complaints about wrong entries.
“The office of the District Inspector Land Records (DILR), Bharuch, is having tough time correcting the wrong entries”, said Patel on the basis of the RTI reply which he has received. “So far, a whopping 2,650 complaints remain to be examined, which means that only 48% of the applications have been corrected”, he added.
According to Patel, the situation is particularly bad in Hansot taluka of the district, where 550 complaints have been made, and of these just 115 have been corrected, while 80% remain to be examined.
Patel, who visited the Bharuch district revenue office to ascertain what the problem was, says, officials have been found to be evading to correct the records, even go on leave, because they are angry over the manner in which the GPS system has been used to create new land records.
“The problem has arisen because the entire job of mapping all the land records was given to a private agency, which did its work without any on-the-spot verification”, Patel said, adding, “Even farmers’ consent was not taken. The officials grudge is, why they should bear the burden of a private agency’s mistakes."
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