THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While the extent of government land available in the state is on a steep decline due to encroachments, the government is clueless about the loss as the actual area of public land is yet to be fully ascertained.The reason? The resurvey work which began 46 years ago is still only at the half-way mark.Of the 1,634 villages in the state, resurvey work in only 765 villages have been completed, which embarrassingly, had also generated close to 12 lakh complaints as its by-product.“The very duty of the Survey Department is to supplement the Revenue Department in handling its tasks”, says Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue) Nivedita P Haran. Unfortunately, the Revenue Department could not offload its work, but the resurvey work only complicated the matters further, sources said.“The fundamental question to be asked is as to why the resurvey of private land needed to be undertaken. It is required only if demanded by a private owner at the time of purchase or sale of his land. As a result, the government land is yet to be demarcated completely”, a top Revenue official told Express.“Even in those villages where re-survey had been completed, the ownership of land had been wrongly fixed resulting in lakhs of complaints. Such complaints would again take many years to be solved”, sources said.This has also emerged as an easy opportunity for demanding bribe for the Survey officials, says former Revenue Minister K P Rajendran. “The complaint redressal titled Survey Adalats are mostly meant for demanding bribe from the complainants,” Rajendran says, adding that the Bhoomi Keralam project launched by the previous LDF Government had to face immense opposition from the Survey Department officials and service organisations. “We wanted the resurvey to be merged with the Bhoomi Keralam project and completed in a time-bound manner”, Rajendran said."Since the resurvey work had not reached anywhere, the focus should be limited to the public land as it is being mismanaged in the state,” feels Planning Board member K N Harilal.Hefty sums from the state exchequer are being diverted to white elephants like the Survey Department - at least Rs 20 crore is spent every year for the salary and other perks of Survey Department officials, according to sources. What has made the issue worse is that the Bhoomi Keralam project is equally paralysed despite the availability of infrastructure and huge sums of money being granted by the State Government and the Centre.The Planning Board report shows that in the financial year 2009-10, Rs 10 crore was sanctioned by the state for the project and an equal share was given by the Centre as well which takes the total figure to Rs 20 crore for the financial year. Of this, Rs 15.50 crore had been given to the Bhoomi Keralam project and Rs 4.5 crore to the National Land Records Modernisation Programme.
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