Land transaction fraud: what can buyers and Government do?

A large of number of cheating cases arising out of the buying-selling of lands are recorded during recent times in Andhra Pradesh.  A society which is aiming to find a place along side the societies of developed nations, a society calling itself as the place to shop for the largest pool of technical manpower, a nation calling itself just, cannot keep quiet for long in matters of injustice, touching the lives of its citizens.  There are questions which spring in a persons mind when he seeks to purchase any piece of land; questions relating to whether the land in question belongs to the seller, the claim of Government on the land, genuineness of the documents etc.  People are used to verifying the encumbrance certificate(EC) issued by the registration department alone, before any purchase.  Revelation that the land belongs to Government or to a different owner at a post-purchase date will make them subjects of injustice at the hands of unscrupulous persons and Government inaction.  If registration department and the link documents are one side of the story of any piece of land, there is another side, much more ancient and interesting, that is narrated by the records of revenue department.  It is therefore in the interest of buyers to have a look at the other side of the story.  The Government also has a major role in proactively revealing the history of all the lands as well as the real-time changes as they happen minute to minute, to its citizens, with the aid of current day technology.

There are sufficient records available at the Tehsildar's Office, Revenue Divisional Office and the Collectorate which help us determine the history of the land.  All the villages had undergone some kind of survey and settlement operations(process of demarcating the various parcels of land in the possession of the ryots, preparation of sketches of each parcel to scale and establishing the ownership of the parcel), in the past, either during British time or afterwards, which established clearly the nature and the history of any piece of land.  There are two primary types of old records available for this purpose.

Survey Land Record (prepared by the survey teams)

The old record available with any village consists of the record prepared by the survey team at the time of survey settlement operations.  This record can be identified by the fact that it has around 30 columns, the first half of the columns on the left hand side page of the record showing details brought forward from the previous record, and the other half of the columns on the right hand side page showing the details of the current survey; it further has stamps of the survey team with number, the signatures of the survey officials. This is called as the Survey Land Register(SLR- in case of Inam or Estate villages) or Rough Land Register(RLR- in case of Government Villages).  This record is like a draft which show the ownership details subject to confirmation by the revenue officials; however the details relating to the survey part are authentic.  The survey team also prepares Field Measurement Books(FMB) and Rough Village Map(RVM) along with the SLR. 

Resettlement Register (prepared by revenue authorities)

Once the preparation of 30 column survey land register is complete after survey settlement operations, the revenue authorities finalised the Resettlement Register (RSR- in case of Government villages) or Fair Adangal (Fair Land Register- FLR- in case of Inam or Estate Villages).  This record is identifiable by the fact that it consists of around 12 columns, which indicate the new and old survey numbers, the nature of the land(wet/dry/poramboke etc.), irrigation source, nature of the soil, and most importantly the ownership.  This record has signatures of the tehsildars or other revenue authorities.  In certain Government villages, old printed Diglot registers from a 1920 vintage survey called Gilman Survey are also available, with details of survey number, sketches from triangulation survey, extents; this gives further information about the history of the land.  In case of Inam villages, old Inam Registers also called B-register, identifiable by their huge size, are available in Collectorates.

The history and nature of the land in question is revealed by perusing the following records.

Mistaken Records

Often people mistake certain other records for the above two.  Certain records were being maintained by the Karanam/Patwari, called karanam copy of the RSR/Fair Adangal in olden days, for their personal use.  In many cases such old records are mistaken for the original RSR today, even by the tehsildar's office staff.  Some original records prepared for enhancement of land revenue in olden days are at times mistanken for the RSR or Permanent A register.  Hence care needs to be taken to distinguish one from the other.

The other registers of importance are:

Permanent A Register(Setwar): This register is a working true copy of the RSR/FLR with changes duly certified and appended at the end every year.

10(1) record: This is a copy of all the individual accounts of farmers, with each account showing the details of all the lands on that farmer's name.  This record is not available in many offices.

1(B) record: This is the current day version of the 10(1) register.

POB(Prohibitory Order Book): This contains all the lands which cannot be sold or purchased by anyone, such as water bodies, burial grounds.  All the mandals have computerised copies of all the survey numbers and extents falling in this category.

Adangal or Permanent Account Number 3:  This is a record which is maintained every year by the village revenue officer(VRO) with details of survey number, extent, the crop there in , the owner of the land , the current enjoyer among other things.  Out of the 10 accounts that need to be maintained by the VRO, this is the most important.  There have been cases of tampering of records by VROs by recording the wrong ownership and extents here.

Government has scanned all the available SLR/equivalent  and RSR/equivalent records along with FMBs for all the villages in the State.

Certain measures will go a long way in reducing the cases of cheating and litigation.

1.  Placing of entire scanned old record in public domain district wise, mandal wise& revenue village wise.

2.  Maintaining the adangals/pahanis online, with real-time data updation for every cropping season, with the use of mobile phone applications by VROs.

3. Enabling the public to print any record they require, through internet, by incorporating appropriate authenticating mechanisms such as bar codes etc.
4.  Linking up the already computerised database of registration department with the database of revenue accounts with the revenue department, enabling real-time updation of all sales in revenue records.