The sad 50 years legacy of the Land Revenue Code 1968

oans want special status primarily to prevent real estate investors from purchasing land in Goa. Goa has over the years become a black money haven for investors. Investors can buy land using shell companies and pay almost the entire amount in cash. There are many reasons why Crores worth of land transactions go undetected, including poor law enforcement, corruption in the sub-registrars office especially in Quepem and other remote taluka headquarters, support by politicians who are also professional real estate agents etc. But probably the primary reason why these benami property deals go undetected is that of the archaic Goa Land Revenue Code (GLRC).

Goa Land Revenue Code

The Goa Land Revenue Code, 1968 was implemented in haste and without laying the requisite groundwork. The law was supposed to be a comprehensive Legislation which provides for Land survey, land classification, land revenue, land use, acquisition of rights, mutation of land records, etc.

How does the law benefit the public? It does not guarantee an individual’s land ownership/holding rights, the land records are hardly accurate, almost every process takes weeks if not years, and many of the provisions such as the change in land use (land conversion sanad) are just not needed. The law even fails in protecting against illegal land conversion. From the government’s point of view, the law creates an administrative juggernaut by which they can charge the public a fee for implementing selective provisions of the law.

For example, if Person A wants to sell a part of his property to Person B, that can be done through a sale deed in the Sub-Registrar. So why does Person B have to go to the Survey Department to partition his land and include his name in the mutation records? Obviously, the Government wants to maintain a record of the change in the ownership. But then why does person B have to pay a fee for this change? What is person B getting in return by going through agonising weeks of government red tape?  

Under the land revenue code, the State is the proprietor or owner of all the land. The State, through middlemen like the Collector and other land revenue officers, grants a citizen the right to hold land under three classes, namely Class 1, Class 2 and Government Lease. Both Class 1 and Class to allow a person to hold land for perpetuity but only Class 1 holders are allowed to transfer their land. The was the model of the Kings which was later standardised by the British and then continued under the Indian Government.

The problem arose when this policy was implemented in Goa, a State where people traditionally owned the land either as individuals or as a community (communidade). The tradition system was continued by the Portuguese who collected land revenue for protection and administration of the land. Then India liberated Goa, the Maharastra land revenue code was blindly implemented.

To implement the Land Revenue Code in entirety, the President of India would have to annex all the lands in Goa by revoking all individual ownership of land and then grant Class 1 or 2 Occupant rights. This process would have obviously created an uproar in Goa.

Instead, the government decided to send Surveyors door to door in and write names in the occupant column land register. Some smart and lucky individuals got their names added in the tenant column of property. This ad-hoc approach or preparing a Record of Rights register is the reason many paddy fields are barren and people have to spend years in Court removing fake names from the records of their land.

Land Revenue and Land 

Revenue Accounting

The Land Revenue Code has the word “Revenue” in it because the law allows the government to collect land from the “occupants” of the land. In the example mentioned earlier, Person B has to include his name in the land records because he is liable to pay an annual fee as land revenue to the government in exchange for the right to hold or occupy the land. Person A will surely not want to pay land revenue on the land sold off to person B.

If the government starts collecting revenue, even say 1 paisa per square meter, the government will have to proactively update all its records including the Form 1 & 14.

The Goa land revenue code explicitly states that occupants shall pay a land revenue and that all lands are liable to the payment of land revenue to the Government.  Clause 46 explicitly states that the land revenue is the paramount charge on the land. If an Occupant fails to make payments, the law empowers the Collector to recover any arrears by selling off the land along with the trees, building and other things attached to the land.  Of course, the law allows the government to exempt any land from such payment.

 The problem in Goa is that the Government expects the citizens to come forth and update the land records. In Maharastra, the onus of updating the land records lies on the government. There, the details of land transfers are obtained orally or in writing from parties concerned. In addition monthly list of all registered transfer has to be obtained from the office of Sub-Registrar and orders of the collector. Information is first recorded in a register called as mutation register or village form VI. Notices are required to be issued to the interested parties and details displaced at prominent places for inviting objections if any.

Notes about the objections recorded in the register of disputes are enquired to verify its validity. After the settlement of objections, mutation is certified and transferred to village form VII-XII ( same as Goas’ From 1 & 14) or record of Right Register in the village area.

 In city survey area it is maintained in the form of property card on same principle. After its certification, it is presumed to be true until the contrary is proved or a new entry is lawfully substituted. It also becomes a record of liabilities indicating the type of occupant's like class I, class II or other rights as a lessee or a grantee, along with terms and conditions, revenue, rent and other particulars.

The process is facilitated by subsidiary registers for disputed cases, heirship cases, new subdivision cases. From the record of rights, all entries of persons and their land are posted in the register of holdings for drawing up an account of what each person is primarily responsible to the payment of land revenue.

What will happen if Government charges land revenue?

If the government charges a nominal amount on land revenue, every individual whose name is in Form 1 & 14 register will be liable to pay a small fee according to the type of land, whether settlement or agriculture and the assessment of the land.

The disadvantage is that even poor Goans who are living on land will have to pay tax but the government can exempt such people. But the advantages are far greater.

In the case of agricultural land, the talathi will be forced to record what is being cultivated on the land. There are thousands of hectares of fertile agricultural land which are not being cultivated due to fictitious names entered on Form 1 & 14. For three consecutive years, if the talathi records that the land is not being cultivated, the names will be deleted according to the Agricultural Tenancy Act. Then the onus of cultivation will fall on the person whose name shows in the Occupant column. This will pressurise the occupant or his heirs to pay the fee,  cultivate the land or sell it off. In Maharastra only a farmer can purchase agricultural land, which guarantees that the person purchasing the land will cultivate it.

It’s a known secret that lakhs of square meters of land have been purchased by political and real estate entities through sale deeds. This details of these transactions remain a secret because the Sale deed is the only paper trail of the transaction and the Sub-registrar does not maintain a register based on survey numbers. If one wants to search for a sale deed, they have to manually inspect each and every sale deed document signed in that year.

If the government starts collecting land revenue, the subregistrar will have to send a list of all sale deeds to the revenue department to update their land records. The seller of the land will not want to pay the fee and therefore will ensure that his name is removed from the land register.

Such a move will open a Pandora’s box of benami transactions and land transfers. This will also discourage real estate investors from parking their black money in the form of land in Goa.  Updates records will also help identify rightful heirs/beneficiaries of land acquisition, who would otherwise spend years proving their rights. 

Overlapping Land Conversion Laws

The provisions of the GLRC related to land conversion needs to be removed. Under the chairmanship of Ramakant Khalap, the Law Commission published Report No 5 in 2009 in which it recommended an amendment to Section 32 in order to provide an easier route for the landholder to take the benefit of Regional Plan. The amendment deems any land to be converted for settlement purpose under GLRC which has been demarcated as settlement land in the Regional Plan or Outline Development Plan.

However, the question is why do citizens need the Sanad Conversion certificate in the first place. Sanads during British era were certificates or testimonials of protection or recognition given to local rulers. In the GLRC, Sanads were to be granted after the Survey conducted under Section 3 of Goa, Daman and Diu Land Revenue (City Survey) Rules, 1969. Form A of the rules describe the Sanad as a certificate given by which rights over property in land will be permanently fixed. What exactly happened to this exercise warrants deeper research.

Needless to say, in the era of Regional Planning, a 50-year-old policy like Sanad Conversion is outdated and obsolete. Worse, it overlaps with the TCP Act and citizens are forced to spend extra time and money getting their property converted under the TCP Act as well as the GLRC law. Why has the government not removed the provisions of Conversion Sanad? Because it is a source of revenue for the government and it has ample scope for corruption and bribery.

 Are Goans willing to have Special Status like protection by paying Land revenue?

In the last 50 years, Goa has knowingly or unknowingly mostly adhered to the practices evolved by a law that can only be described as an illegitimate offspring of the Portuguese and British land policies, instead of adopting a well thought out system suited to the aims and objectives of the independent democratic state.