The provisions of the Town Planning Act need to be supplemented

- Land Revenue Laws and

- Lokabhimukha Guidance - - H.S. Patel IAS (Retd.)

- Non-cultivation permission is required to be subordinated to the lands included in the Master Development Plan

The basic law for regulating land is the Land Revenue Act-1879. At that time and even today the form of this law is regulatory. (Regulating) Land is an important part of social and economic development as an important cadastral. The main purpose of this law enacted during the British rule was to collect revenue from land and land revenue was the main source of income of the state government at that time. The account manual is still in existence today and it mainly contains the Village Form No. 6 Mutation Register, Form No. 8 and 7T12 which are important for the occupier of the land and the changes in it. Some time ago, the lands which were previously surveyed and revenue records prepared, were re-surveyed as part of updating the records and the records prepared (computerized) and declared certified have been left in a large number of areas across the state and knowledge of the same remains. As per the final purification is not done yet.

The purpose of giving the above background is only to inform the prevailing situation in the field of land revenue management. Basically in our country and state even today land is talked about in terms of agriculture and even today it is a fact that 65% of the population is engaged in agriculture based and allied business as a means of economic gain. As urbanization / industrialization has taken place, land usage has changed and agricultural lands have been converted for non-agricultural purposes.

The basic purpose of today's article is to clarify that conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purpose i.e. permission under Section-65 of the Land Revenue Act is being given a larger form and should really be a secondary matter. It is the function of the revenue system to collect the above revenue. That is, when the land which is agricultural sadar (below) land of survey number and whose shape (Revenue assessment) is determined is to be used for non-agricultural use, the work of the collector / revenue system is to determine and collect the non-agricultural shape (revenue) instead of the shape of agricultural land. Thus this matter is a secondary process. Perhaps if the land is of controlled authority type (new condition) premium amount is to be charged as per rules. When the land is of old tenure, only the non-agricultural nature is to be determined under the provisions of Article-65 and for the information of the public it is also clarified that even if the land is of old tenure and has been used for non-agricultural purposes, the land revenue Under Section-66/67 of the Act, there is a provision to regularize non-agricultural act by taking the amount of shaped patta.

Therefore, if the agricultural land has a clear title, then the non-agricultural permission should be considered as a secondary process or part of the formality. Nowadays as part of ease of doing business many permission processes have been streamlined and accordingly the non-farming process has been made online.

But according to the feedback that I am getting, as part of title verification, applications for non-cultivation permission are rejected by showing trivial reasons such as to be taken into account in previous revision, change in area, title verification starting from 1951, stamp duty levy etc. In fact now when the government has computerized the records all the records are available online and the earlier entitlement notes which have been sanctioned by the revenue authorities after many years anything void ab initio is illegal from the beginning in serious cases like e.g. The State Government should scrutinize all cases of rejection by the Collector on grounds other than non-agriculturist and in many cases the rejection under indemnity is granted after some time which is mostly based on revenue record.

Thus, it is necessary to categorize the non-agricultural process as a formality rather than as a major form.

We will elaborate on the town planning provisions related to this land revenue in the next issue.

(gradually)