Scrutiny of talathis’ records begins today

PUNE, June 30: In a bid to weed out corruption at the `grass-root' level, the Pune Divisional Commissioner Arun Bhatia, from tomorrow onward...

PUNE, June 30: In a bid to weed out corruption at the `grass-root’ level, the Pune Divisional Commissioner Arun Bhatia, from tomorrow onwards, is launching a massive drive to check the records of `Talathis’ in about 6,000 villages in five districts of Pune Division.

Inspection of 2,692 Talathi headquarters in the five districts will be carried out during the `anti-corruption’ drive, involving almost the entire revenue machinery in the division.

A circular to this effect was today issued by the Commissionerate to respective government officials including district collectors, chief executive officers and subdivisional officers.

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Explaining the features of the drive at a press conference convened today, Bhatia observed that the whole exercise would be focussed on streamlining the administrative functioning of Talathis and bring to notice the irregularities committed, if any, by the village-level officers.

“It has been brought to our notice that many Talathis are not making regular entries into the record books, even in instances where they are suppose to take suo moto action,” said Bhatia.

“In the drive, special attention will be given to corruption-prone areas such as maintenance of revenue and sales deeds records, yearship entries and land use records,” said Bhatia.

“The inspection teams have been instructed to take all possible action including making entries on the spot, while inspecting the records in Talathi headquarters,” said Bhatia, adding such a step would facilitate instant redressal of grievances of many affected people.

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He said the anti-corruption drive will not only tell the real state of administrative functioning at Talathi level but will also provide an insight into the lacunae existing in the system which can be specifically targetted.

In the first phase, an initial inspection will be carried out from July 1 to 7, in which a squad comprising deputy collector tehsildar besides others will visit the Talathi headquarters and will check the revenue and other records.

In the second phase, a special squad comprising district collector, chief executive officer and deputy collector will scrutinise the report submitted by the initial inspection team. Subsequently, the inspection reports from district collectorates will be submitted to Divisional Commissionerate by July 13.

“There is nothing secretive about the drive and the whole inspection process will be carried out openly. The detailed report of inspection will be released by July 15,” said Bhatia.