Leh: In a major development towards land sector reforms, the administration of Union Territory of Ladakh has withdrawn the attestation powers of ‘nautor’ land mutation from the Tehsildars and has conferred the same upon Deputy Commissioners with a set of added protocols.
In revenue language ‘nautor’ means breaking of barren and waste village land for cultivation purposes. Such pieces of land originally belong to the ‘State’.
There has been rule in place dating back to the times of Maharaja Hari Singh for allotment of such land to the beneficiaries purely for the purpose of cultivation with strict restrictions against change of land use. The rule draws its strength from Ailan (announcement) number 38 of 1932 of the regime of Maharaja Hari Singh which provided that the mutation of ‘nautor’ shall be attested by officials of Revenue Department not below the rank of Tehsildar.
The entitlement of ‘nautor’, it’s subsequent use and alleged misuse has remained a consistently challenging issue in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. After the bifurcation of the ‘State’, the successor Union Territories continue to battle the problem in their own ways.
In the Ladakh Union Territory, there have been shades of tension between Revenue authorities and the beneficiaries over what perception both sides have on the change of land use. The Revenue side says that beneficiaries have misused the land patches meant for agricultural purposes. The beneficiaries argue that since the governments in the past failed to provide irrigation facilities rendering the lands barren.
The Revenue side also suspects and accuses field officers of having facilitated wrong use of land over the decades.
In this backdrop, the Principal Secretary, Revenue, Dr Pawan Kotwal has issued a detailed order. The order number 11 (Rev)UTL of 2022 dated 15.04.2022 reads as under:
“The Ailan number 38 dates 31 Har 1989 AD (1932) allowed ‘nautor’ (breaking of barren and waste land for cultivation purpose) and it provided that the mutation of ‘nautor’ shall be attested by the officers of the Revenue department not below the rank of Tehsildar.
“The purpose of Ailan Number 38 is restricted to permitting an estate holder in a village/estate to break the barren and waste land belonging to the State for the purpose of raising crops or for agriculture purpose only.
“In case of Ladakh, where rain-fed crops cannot be grown for want or adequate rainfall, it also presupposes creation/development of irrigation facilities, like canals/khuis to the site where ‘nautor’ is proposed to be done without which crops/agricultural produce cannot be raised.
“However, it has been observed that the provisions of Ailan Number 38 have been widely misused in the Union Territory of Ladakh, and the barren and waste patches of State land have been encroached/fenced by the land-grabbers and the mutation of such grabbed land have been got attested/verified as ‘nautor’ in violation of the Ailan Number 38 by the Revenue officers like Naib Tehsildars/Tehsildars in the past and this nefarious practice is still continuing in some places.
“In order to put a stop to this illegal practice it has become necessary to withdraw the power of attestation/verification of mutation of ‘nautor’ from the Tehsildars in the Union Territory of Ladakh with immediate effect.
“Henceforth, the Deputy Commissioner of Ladakh and Kargil would be authorised to attest such mutations, that too only after conducting personal on the spot visit where ‘nautor’ is reported to have been done and after satisfying themselves that the ‘nautor’ has truly happened as per the provisions and intended purpose of the Ailan Number 38”.
Ailan 38: Ladakh withdraws ‘nautor’ mutation powers from Tehsildars, confers upon DCs
