Residents and officials in around 49 villages of Ernakulam district continue to rely on land survey sketches that are over a century old with the land resurvey process in Ernakulam district at a standstill for years.
The process, which began in Ernakulam in 1988 with the Vengoor village in Kunnathunad taluk, is still incomplete.
75 villages completed
Of the 124 villages in the district as per the 2011 census, the resurvey has been completed in 75. The last village in the district for which resurvey records have been implemented is Thekkumbhagam in Kanayannur taluk. The resurvey for the village was conducted in 2010 and a gazette notification formalising the record was issued in 2015, according to senior officials.
The government called off the process in 2012 after disputes cropped up over boundaries while the resurvey was conducted, said R. Ashok Kumar, a surveyor who was till recently general secretary of the Survey Field Staff Association.
“But after the LDF government came to power, a decision was taken in 2018 to resume the resurvey, but nothing came of it,” he said. “The resurvey is currently progressing only in three villages in Idukki and one in Kasaragod, while the others have stopped.”
Shortage of surveyors
Mr. Kumar and other officials at the Directorate of Survey and Land Records pegged the delay in the process to a shortage of surveyors. Of the 1,678 surveyors employed across the State, 103 are posted in Ernakulam.
“Surveyors are currently being assigned other Revenue Department work like boundary disputes, land acquisition for roads and surveying Waqf land, keeping the resurvey on hold,” Mr. Kumar said.
Within the city, surveyors were also caught up with identifying encroachments on poromboke land along canals, said another official.
In the absence of a comprehensive resurvey, survey records from the early 20th century are still being used. The last settlement records were prepared between 1886 and 1911 for the erstwhile princely States of Travancore and Cochin, meticulously documenting details like the type of land and amount owed in tax, the number of areca and jackfruit trees that stood on each landholding, along with the extent of poromboke land and wetland in each village.
Land reforms
These basic tax registers and sketches from over a century ago do not reflect the changes catalysed by the State’s land reforms or changes in land use and ownership over the years.
As per these records, large tracts of land continue to lie with their original owners, though the land may have been parcelled out or would have changed hands several times, the official explained.
“If the land is being acquired and resurvey sketches are available, an individual’s land can be located quickly and precisely. In the old survey sketches, a single survey number could extend to around 25 acres. Locating the boundaries of a piece of land as it exists today, in that vast tract is nearly impossible,” Mr. Kumar said.
Suggestions were made that draftsmen could also take up the duties of surveyors to get extra hands on the field, but this never materialised, Mr. Kumar said. “Surveying a single village and handing the records over to the Revenue Department could take up to eight months and 35 surveyors,” he said.
