Though a belated one, the Divisional Commissioner, Jammu Dr Raghav Langer finally conducted a surprise visit in the Offices of Sub Registrar, Jammu North, Jammu South, Jammu Khas and inspected Registries of these Offices. The news value of these visits, if for surprise check, are of enough appreciation by the public. Such visits should have been done in the past 2-3 years when the public had faced tremendous harassment and exploitation in the hands of Registration officials from the orderly to Sub-Registrar. Anyway, to the ultimate satisfaction, it is better late than never.
Though a lot of improvement is noticed in the system of registration, the department could not get rid of elements of corruption and harassment to the people.
The initial high-handedness, rigidity and arrogance ostensibly in the name of genuineness of the transactions/registration process, have now settled in a routine manner after the officials' hang-over behaving as if they were a court, having got diluted with the more slots for registration and distribution of registration work between more Sub-Registrar offices.
Interestingly, the requisite documents that the Sub-Registrar offices have been demanding for the purpose of registration were actually falling in the domain of the Revenue department itself which was not easy to obtain without substantial leg-work and coughing out a handsome amount.
The visit would be useful only if those were random and sudden to find out the ground realities at these offices.
There are still some lacunae in the registration system that hampers the confidence of the common man, which the higher authorities are supposed to remove in the public interest.
The exposure of missing revenue records of two important and premium land chunks of Sunjwan and Chowadhi has already stunned the citizens beyond salvage. Mere registration of FIRs would not serve any purpose until the action is vigorously pursued and actively taken to logical conclusion.
The Revenue Department has rightly directed all the Deputy Commissioners to lodge the FIRs for the missing records and report by Nov 20. The notoriety of the crafty revenue officials has proved correct by the exposure that not all is well in the revenue department. The possibility of more incidents of missing revenue records is not ruled out in other districts too. The mess created by the Patwaris and higher revenue officials by alleged fiddling, manipulations, tempering and some time destroying the record in league with land mafia and men in power has been responsible for a large volume of litigation in the courts.
Div Com rightly interacted with the vendors, vendees and lawyers who had come with their clients for registration of documents and inquired about the issues being faced by them.
Checking and monitoring the reconciliation of records, total time being taken by the Sub Registrar Offices for registration of documents and he also scrutinizes the documents should continue regularly to restore the lost confidence of the people.
