State to frame single, comprehensive law on revenue

The Orissa government is planning to codify all the existing revenue-related laws in the state to formulate a single, comprehensive law on revenue.

Besides the Orissa Land Reforms Act and Consolidation and Settlement Acts, at least 50 other miscellaneous revenue-related laws are in force in the state.

“We want to introduce a single revenue law by codifying all the related laws in the state”, the state’s revenue minister S N Patra said here on Sunday.

“The process to simplify the revenue laws has already been started and the proposed law is likely to be introduced in the next session of the state assembly. The main objective of this exercise is to simplify the revenue laws in order to give quick justice to the people”, he added.

While the revenue department stresses on the generation of the revenue from the department, at the same time it also gives emphasis on delivery of quick justice to the people, the minister stated.

There are a number of revenue-related cases like mutation cases pending to be disposed off. Among other reasons, registration due to the low bench mark valuation are one of the causes for pending of the mutation cases in the different tehsil offices, sources said.

The revenue officers including the field level employees like the revenue inspectors would be imparted the orientation training on the revenue law and will be advised for the quick disposal of the revenue cases.

Apart from this, the state government has also taken steps for computerization of the records and maps in the different tehsils to enable the people to get all relevant information.

The state government is going to computerized the old land records in the tehsil offices in the state.

The Orissa Computer Application Center (OCAC), the technical directorate of the state IT department has been entrusted for the task and OCAC would start its work very soon. The government has also taken up the work to computerize of the map sheets in every tehsil in the state.

In the first phase, the digitization of the map-sheets in selected tehsils of Ganjam, Keonjhar and Khurda districts have been taken under the Computerization Land Record (CLR) project of the Central government.

The CLR project was launched in the state to computerize the land records. The tehsil offices are now issuing certified copies of the Record of Rights (ROR) and miscellaneous certificates to the users.

Users’ fee is being collected on computerized deliverables. The main objective of computerization was to offer maximum benefits to the users with transparency.