Kin denying women land share: Karnataka minister Krishna Byre Gowda

The government’s drive to transfer farmland ownership from dead persons to their legal heirs has found that men are denying their female family members a share in inheritable assets, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said.

Karnataka has 4.1 crore agricultural landholdings. After Gowda’s department started seeding these landholdings with Aadhaar, it was discovered that owners of 49.06 lakh plots were dead and records were not updated in the name of their legal heirs, using a process known as pouti khata.

Gowda has ordered a suo motu drive, asking all village administrative officers (VAO) to go door-to-door and find the legal heirs.

“Despite lack of cooperation from people, we managed to bring legal heirs into ownership of about 12 lakh lands. Some are not cooperating because they don’t want to give a share to the female member of the family,” Gowda told DH.

The law recognises daughters -- irrespective of their marital status -- as coparceners, giving them equal inheritance rights. A woman can surrender her share through a relinquishment deed.

“If there is a relinquishment deed or a partition deed, we will bring it on record. But they (people) don’t want to legally get it done. At the same time, they also don’t want us to enter the female member of the family into records,” Gowda said.

Gowda has estimated that 30% of cases involve complexities. "While 5% of cases are in civil courts, 20% involve disagreement amongst brothers. Then, there are cases where brothers don’t want their sisters to get a share,” he said. 

No other Indian state took up the exercise of estimating the nature of agricultural landholdings, Gowda said. “This was a 50-year-old problem. It was a disgrace and no government even knew about it,” he said.

Failure to transfer farmland ownership from deceased persons to their legal heirs leads to problems, the minister explained. "These people won't have absolute ownership. They can't approach banks won't receive government assistance," he said. “I asked people why they didn’t get pouti khatas done. The answers were wishy-washy.”

The government's pouti khata drive is also fighting corruption, Gowda said. "Let's say that a VAO did one pouti khata in 2-3 days. I don't know what the [bribe] was. I don't know what percentage of officials exploited this. By taking this process to the doorsteps of people, we've cut retail corruption," he said.