A land dispute that had dragged on for nearly five decades in Dangarkhedi village of Uttar Pradesh's Mirzapur district has finally been resolved, after District Magistrate Pawan Kumar Gangwar ordered a review of faulty revenue records that had locked farmers out of government welfare schemes for years.
Why the case had been stuck for fifty years
Since 1979, errors had persisted in Dangarkhedi's revenue records. Because of this, sale deed registrations, known locally as bainama, could not go through, mutation of ownership after a transfer could not be processed, and even the names of heirs of landholders could not be recorded. The uncorrected paperwork hit farmers directly, since applications for government schemes were routinely rejected because of mismatches in the records. Villagers were forced to make repeated trips to the district headquarters over every land-related issue, big or small, yet no lasting solution was found.
A complaint reaches the District Magistrate, SDM given charge
After taking charge, District Magistrate Pawan Kumar Gangwar received a complaint about the flaws in Dangarkhedi's revenue records. Treating the complaint seriously, he appointed Sub-Divisional Magistrate Gulabchand as the nodal officer to look into the matter and handed him the responsibility of resolving the case.
A 50-day survey, followed by a public meeting
SDM Gulabchand, along with the revenue team, carried out a survey in the village for around 50 days. Every entry in the records was scrutinised in detail, and wherever errors were found, they were corrected in a phased manner. Once the survey was complete, a public meeting known locally as a jan chaupal was organised in the village, where the SDM personally read out the name of every landholder listed in the records so that any objection or issue could be resolved on the spot. Through this exercise, the village's records were fully corrected.
Farmers to get direct benefit of government schemes
With the errors in the revenue records now fixed, farmers in Dangarkhedi will be able to access the Farmer Registry, the Kisan Credit Card and the Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, among other government schemes. Earlier, paperwork snags meant applications were rejected even after farmers applied, but that hurdle has now been completely cleared. Villagers will also no longer need to make repeated trips to the headquarters for land-related matters. With the fifty-year-old tangle finally untangled, there is visible relief and happiness in the village, with residents crediting the administration's initiative for the change.
What the District Magistrate said
District Magistrate Pawan Kumar Gangwar said that after the complaint about errors in Dangarkhedi's revenue records was received, the SDM was appointed as the nodal officer, who ran a 50-day survey in the village and got the records corrected. He said these very errors in the records were the reason people had been unable to access government schemes so far, but now that the flaws have been removed, farmers will get the full benefit of these schemes.
