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Mamata junks Basu-era land lever by Meghdeep Bhattacharyya
Mamata Banerjee has reintroduced an administrative structure to bring land and land reforms officials under the district administration’s “direct supervision” in a move aimed at injecting accountability and reining in staff close to the Left that had scrapped the system.

The Jyoti Basu government had abolished the British-era structure in 1989, bringing in decentralisation but allowing Alimuddin Street to pack the department with chosen officials who would bypass the district administration and report directly to their political bosses at Writers’ Buildings.

Sources in the Mamata government said the chief minister, who also handles land and land reforms, came up with the plan at the cabinet’s last meeting on July 20.

Mamata, they said, proposed that department officials at the block and subdivision levels be brought under the supervision of subdivisional officers and those at the district level under district magistrates who report directly to the chief minister.

Following the governor’s nod, land reforms commissioner R.D. Meena on Thursday passed the order, which came into effect on Monday.

The order said the state government “considered it necessary to bring the integrated set-up” of land reforms administration under “direct supervision and control of the district magistrate and collector without making any structural changes” to the existing set-up for “proper functioning” in “public interest”.

The primary responsibilities of land officials at the lower rungs include mutation, conversion of the nature of land, vesting of ceiling-excess land, survey, mapping and settlement. Thursday’s move effectively means these officials will have less scope for malpractice — rampant during the past two decades, according to a Writers’ source.

Former land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah refused to comment on the order’s implications. “She (Mamata) feels this will help her administration and she is well within her rights to reintroduce the structure. I will not comment on its implications. We had brought our reform in 1989 because we thought it was necessary,” Mollah told The Telegraph.

The 1989 order had taken land officials out of the supervision of the district administration and made them accountable only to the land reforms commissioner and the director of land records and survey at the state level. Since the commissioner and the director, both based in Calcutta, are responsible for land matters that concern the whole state, they couldn’t supervise officials at the lower levels.

The government sources said the 1989 order was passed under pressure from Alimuddin Street to give the CPM’s district leadership the scope to exert influence in land-related matters.

“That enabled the Left Front’s political set-up to interfere in land deals at the block, subdivisional or district levels, without the administration directly finding out. That is what the chief minister wants to put an end to,” said a source.

The source said the suggestion came from former land and land reforms commissioner Debabrata Bandopadhyay.

The cabinet source said Thursday’s order “will bring the 341 block level, 43 subdivisional and 18 district level land and land reforms officials — all appointed during the Left Front regime — under the supervision of the DMs and SDOs, whom the chief minister can directly command”.