From “Pert Patwar” to “Pert Sarkar”
Since long, our land record management has been “disciplined” under the rules laid by the West Pakistan Land Revenue Act, 1967 (mutation) and the Registration Act of 1908 (registration of document) which does not require the state to certificate the title of land to its owner
Pakistan is a country where millions of land dispute cases remain stuck in the courts because of inefficient and erroneous land records. Courts, lawyers and the litigants remain in ultimate confusion because of extreme duplication and cheating in the public record documents that help both the owner and cheater equally to drag the litigation for decades. Because of inefficiency and a negligible number of revenue courts, operating under the WP Land Revenue Act 1967, the whole burden of land conflicts lies on the trial and appellate courts (lower, higher and supreme) which are already overburdened.
The revenue courts may be classified as the Board of Revenue, Commissioner, Collector, Assistant Collector of theFirst Grade and Second Grade. The provincial government that exercises administrative control over them appoints such officers. The WP Land Revenue Act 1967 prescribes their powers and functions. But all these courts have done nothing phenomenal to settle the disputes according to a recent research by Dr Faqir Hussain, Director General, Federal Judicial Academy, Islamabad. Ironically, there are only four Appellate Tribunals of In land Revenue in Pakistan. And since 2013, more than 19,000 cases that were referred to them are in the pendency.
Since long, our land record management has been “disciplined” under the rules laid by the West Pakistan Land Revenue Act, 1967 (mutation) and the Registration Act of 1908 (registration of document) which does not require the state to certificate the title of land to its owner. So, the land records, which are full of errors, are the only means to claim ownership. Although the superior courts have repeatedly decided that these land revenue records are contestable and not final but contesting these is not an easy job. It takes life, assets and years to do that in the prevailing justice system. In simple words, we are a country where the government does not take any responsibility to register the title of land and even in 2017, all such disputes in Pakistan are still dependent on land record entries that are purely in the hands of Patwaris to maneuver.
In the absence of a state certificate of title, everyone from rulers to paupers is forced to bribe and salute a very famous and self-proclaimed “Chief Justice Land Records”, Patwari in Pakistan. A grade 9 Patwari is more powerful than anyone else including the judges who can do nothing but to nod on the information provided by the said “officer”. In the case of any conflict, this earning hand of Gardawar/Qaunongo( Grade11), Naib Tehsildar (14) and Tehsildar (16) finds complete peace of mind by these superior officers and the courts, lawyers and the litigants find nowhere to escape. According to a research by (FIAS, 2005b), 40 percent of all cases filed in our courts are land record conflicts.
The present system was launched to facilitate the masses and the break the monopoly by bringing an end to “Patwar Culture” but until now, despite sincere efforts by the provincial government, is not getting there at all
Although a low-ranked state functionary, in theory, the Patwari in practical has a monopoly on many critical functions of the state at the grass root level. Except for land record management, he is entitled to perform many official and para-official duties including but not limited to rectifying voter lists, prepare for political rallies, deciding the lining of water resources, facilitating VIP tours in the area and responding to emergency situations in natural disasters.
To tackle this, in 2012, the provincial government of Shahbaz Sharif in Punjab decided to digitise the land records of the province. This is a marvelous achievement of Punjab government through which qabza mafia, litigation and land disputes will be resolved in the province and no one would dare occupy illegally the land of any other. This system can also root out corruption at the lower level in the Revenue Department and people will get rid of centuries old cruel practices. The owner of the land will be saved from any kind of ambiguity about their properties through computer service centers set up under land record management information system working under the management of Punjab Land Record Authority.
The system is good and functional through its service centers in every district and tehsil headquarter of Punjab now, but is incomplete, full of errors and troublesome due to the resistance of the self-proclaimed “Chief Justice Land Record”, our favourite, Patwari. Traditionally, the land record is kept on two perts (pages) in the patwari’s office. One is “Pert Patwar”, a personal record of Patwari and the other is “Pert Sarkar” a land record statement the Patwari keeps for the government.
Patwaris are low-ranking officers, record keepers in fact, but very rich because of the money they earn through illegal means and can afford to employ assistants at their own expense. These assistants are assigned a duty to record and maintain revenue registers for their boss, “Patwari”. The digitisation of the record was done from the “Pert Sarkar”. When the digitisation started, Patwaris knew that if successful, it will end their centuries-long monopoly and illegal earning. So, when the government ordered them to submit “Pert Sarkar” in the data entry offices in six months, they “prepared” new “Pert Sarkar” through their assistants who were advised to write in a handwriting no one could read and leave serious errors in the documents so that all data entry being done remains erroneous and the need of the Patwari is never diminished.
The West Pakistan Land Revenue Act, 1967 has been amended in 2011 and 12 respectively for different purposes meaningfully. In 2011, substitution of section 5,6,7,8,9,10 and 11 of Act XVII of 1967 was made. Although existed since long, but legally, only after these substitutions, the province was divided into divisions and districts, districts into sub-divisions, new classes of revenue officers, appointments of commissioners and collectors and their additional, assistant commissioners (revenue) and assistant collectors and a new definition of Tehsildar was provided. In the same year the amendments in section 13, 14, 16, 60, 63, 69, 84, 89, 92, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 123 161, 162, 163 and 164 were made.
In 2012, the insertion of section 135-A and 142-A, amendments in sections 136,137,140 and 14, and omission of section 139 in Act XVII of 1967 were made. But none of these changes were related to the section-3 of the very act which meaningfully excludes the site of a town or village from the preview of land record.
Very few of us know that Land Records Manual in para 7.57-A instructs to put areas that have become urban out of the preview of District Collectors, hence Patwaris. Their mandate is only limited to agriculture land, however, since our independence, this illegality of maintaining and manipulating urban records by the revenue department has continued. As per law, there is no legal justification available for these Patwaris to keep the urban record (of the land where houses and buildings have been constructed and no agricultural activity is present). The whole effort for the implementation of this section was stopped after the memorandum No. 3417-68/1203-(S), dated 8 July 1968, was thrown in the trash. This memorandum addressed all Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners to ensure that urban areas are excluded from the record of District Collector at once.
Due to this, when after a sincere effort, when the government launched the system, people did not feel a sigh of relief in proportion to the effort laid on it. Every second person approaching the service center is complaining that the record present in the computer is wrong and that in the Patwari’s register is right. “Pert Patwar” which is the personal record of Patwari is being maintained by them without error and in beautiful handwriting. When a person approaches a land record service center of his area to get the required document, he/she finds a lot of errors in the data.
The only person who can issue a “Fard Badar” (a document for correction) is Patwari. So, to correct the mistake present in the computer, the service center asks these landowners to approach the Patwari and ask him to issue a “Fard Badar” so that the correction in a record can be made in the computer and a true copy may be issued. Before the digitisation, life was so “easy” for a common man. After giving a pre-decided bribe to the Patwari, the required document was provided by him along with a cup of tea. But now, after suffering in long queues of the bank to pay the prescribed fee and the service centers to get the copy, when the record is found wrong, it takes more days and more money to satisfy the Patwari for a “Fard Badar”. The suffering does not end here. If the name or CNIC number of the owner is wrong in the digital record, the owner then needs to move towards Assistant Director Land Records (ADLR) who will issue a “Sehat Nama” (a document for the correction of digital record).
The service centers are small and the public is large. Operators are a few and the queues are long. There are additional sufferings as well. The new system requires biometric verification of the owner, which is a good practice to ensure the credibility of the applicant. But, in case the verification fails due to wrong entries in the land record database, the service center has no alternate facility. For this, the applicant is sent to Nadra E-Sahulat center where he/she gets a verified copy of the identity and only then the operators at Land Record Facilitation Centre proceed. This adds fatigue to already confused visitors who think that innovation has brought more tension and expense for them instead of ease.
The present system was launched to facilitate the masses and the break the monopoly by bringing an end to “Patwar Culture” but until now, despite sincere efforts by the provincial government, is not getting there at all. There is an urgent need to correct the mystification of land records, their hard to decipher language and cumbersome processing to ensure that digitisation is meeting its objectives. On an urgent basis, “Pert Patwars” shall be taken into custody and data entry operators shall be assigned duty to compare the entered data with their personal records.
The Punjab government in a good move has very recently decided to open Punjab Bank windows in the service centers for fee collection but until and unless the database is not error free, people will not experience the true benefit land record digitisation in the province.
“Pert Patwar”, “Pert Sarkar”, “Fard Badar and “Sehat Nama” are not what they were looking for.