After floods, now its Patwaris turn to destroy flood victims

By Ikram Hoti

ISLAMABAD: The waters have yet to recede and already there is talk about an endless surge in land feuds arising as a consequence of an overwhelming majority of the flood victims having lost everything to the floods, including their land and property ownership documents.

The situation is shaping up to become all the more serious involving agrarian lands, where both title deeds and demarcations are equally important, in the 49 afflicted districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Punjab. Senior Land Revenue authorities claimed, while talking to The News, that they would be able to handle these feuds by retrieving records wherever possible.

However, this correspondent spoke to a number of revenue staffs and some of them indicated that "despite success in retrieving the papers, in many cases feuds would be raging specially in areas known for traditional enmities".

Director Land Revenue Peshawar, Rashid Khan, who supervises the records handling and dispute issues in the flood-inflicted districts of Charsadda and Nowshera, told The News: "I hope the feuds would not be generating on claims over ownership, as records of ownership are maintained at three levels --the Patwari, the district revenue office and the Safe-Houses. Ownership records, if destroyed by floods at one or two levels, might be retrieved at the third level and it could be any of those I mentioned."

His office, however, has no jurisdiction over dispute-settlements in cases of demarcation obliterated by the floodwaters. The Land Revenue officials assist courts on the measurement, location and right to possess-use-sell land pieces on hereditary or purchase basis.

They cannot settle on-the-spot feuds over loss of measured lands by owners and encroachment by neighbouring owners without the intervention of the relevant courts where claims are filed in such disputes.

One Patwari, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "iIsues are finally settled by Patwaris, even after the courts issue verdicts. And most people like to resolve feuds at our levels, as they would not like to go for litigations, especially in cases of agriculture land. They have modest and below-subsistence pieces of land and their incomes cannot afford litigation costs. And it is routine that they have to pay us (bribes) to settle fairly and quickly".

Director Land Revenue, Rashid Khan did not confirm the reports that influential patwaris currently posted outside the flood-hit areas have already launched efforts to get posted to Nowshera and Charsadda districts but said, "I have not heard of such efforts. Maybe it is too early to suggest that but you know, we are criminally callous people, and would like to make money out of people's miseries."

He was of the opinion that the government must immediately put in place measures for quick settlement of such disputes, so that they are not subjected to any more miseries.