District Collector orders review of land records from 1950 onwards

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

District Collector Vinay Gowda G C has directed all sections to compile and examine government and other land records dating back to 1950 across the district.

He issued the instructions during an unprecedented eight-hour-long meeting held on Thursday with sub-divisional officers and tehsildars, where multiple revenue-related issues were reviewed in detail.

The meeting covered a wide range of topics, including determination and collection of premium charges for non-agricultural (NA) land use permissions, regularisation of encroachments on grazing lands up to January 2011, and disposal of pending hearings. Discussions also included recovery of revised premium amounts for earlier NA permissions, providing land and sand for housing projects, disposal of complaints on the “Aaple Sarkar” portal, and clearing long-pending quasi-judicial cases.

Other issues discussed included preparation of a land bank for ceiling, inam, kul, tribal and watan lands, as well as addressing directives issued by the Revenue Minister.

The Collector instructed officials to verify ownership and transfer records of lands distributed by the government, and to check whether any breach of conditions had occurred in Class-2 land holdings. He also ordered a review of government land records since 1950 to identify irregularities in ceiling, inam, kul and allotted lands, and to examine possible unauthorised transactions or discrepancies in valuation and premium charges.

He emphasised that future focus would be on identifying irregularities, illegal transactions and inconsistencies in land records.

The move comes against the backdrop of past corruption cases in land conversion matters, including the arrest of former resident deputy collector (RDC) Khirodkar and revenue assistant Deepak Tribhuvan in May 2025 by the Anti-Corruption Bureau in connection with alleged bribes for converting Class-2 land into Class-1 land. A committee headed by additional collector Sambhajirao Adkune had earlier conducted an inquiry into such cases and submitted its report to the district collector.