Land survey now costs more in State

There is good as well as not-so-pleasant news for rural and urban landholders.

The good news is that at least from May onwards, there will be more government land surveyors across the State. But the not-so-good news is that the fee for getting the survey done has increased by two to eightfold with effect from November 1.

Till the beginning of this month, for villagers, or to be precise, farmers, getting the survey of a property in revenue land done used to cost Rs 600 (Rs 300 used to be paid for licensed surveyors as fees and the rest used to go the government). But now, the surveyors will get Rs 800 per application while the total fee, up to two acres, is Rs 1,500.

If the extent of land is more than two acres, the additional fee is Rs 200 an acre.
In case of urban areas, the survey fee ranges from Rs 1,500 to 2,500 per application, while the surveyors will get a fixed amount of Rs 800 per case. If the area is two acres, while the fixed fee is Rs 2,000, an additional fee of Rs 1,000 should be paid for every extra acre.

For one to two acres, the fee is Rs 2,000, for 20 guntas to one acre, it is Rs 2,500 and below 20 guntas, Rs 3,000 per application. All these years, the fee used to be Rs 300 for the surveyors in both rural and urban areas, according to a government notification issued on October 21.

The revenue department (land survey) officials, who are privy to preparing the revised fee, said that the upward revision has been in tune with the demand by the licensed surveyors who went on a strike for two months recently. Farmers who own land definitely can pay the revised fee. Those who fall in the BPL group may find it a bit difficult to pay, they pointed out.

Shortage of surveyors

Lack of surveyors, both government and licenced, has led to piling up of not less than 25 lakh applications, seeking survey to be done, pertaining to land grant cases.

In addition, not less than 20,000 applications regarding mutation is pending. For many years, the government had not recruited surveyors and lack of funds used to be cited as the reason.

Recently, the government recruited about 1,800 surveyors. With this, the department now has 3,464 surveyors. In addition, there are about 2,000 licensed surveyors.
“The newly recruited surveyors are being trained. They will be able to do the field work after six months. Even with this new staff strength, it is will not be possible to clear the pending cases for the next two years,” said C Ravi Kumar, general secretary of the Licenced Surveyors Association.

He said that it was a fact that licensed surveyors had sought increase in remuneration. But that should not have caused burden on farmers. “For us, the fee has gone up from Rs 300 to Rs 800. But why is the government collecting Rs 1,500 or more? The government’s share is going into the personal deposit (PD) account of deputy commissioners. The money, so far, should have been spent on clearing the pending files, but that has not happened,” he said.

Producing a land survey report is mandatory for every transaction to be carried out by a property owner. Even for raising bank loans, the report has to be produced.
For such important work, lack of adequate staff should not be a hurdle. Even with the new recruitments, the pendency, to a certain extent, may continue because land survey has to be carried out in many parts of the State, official sources said.