NT NETWORK
Quepem
While the process to award land rights to tribals under the Forest Rights Act has gained momentum, nine years after the process was initiated, it will take a minimum of eight months more to complete the spot verification process before the plans are generated.
Highly placed sources in the office of the Deputy Collector, requesting anonymity, informed that the village panchayats process the claim files, and send it to the office of block development officer who scrutinises the files and then forwards the same to the office of the Deputy Collector.
The office of the Deputy Collector in turn scrutinises the files for documents, and then forwards the same to the special team constituted to carry out spot verification.
The official informed that the spot verification team, however, finds it difficult as the claims made by the applicants do not match the records which leads to delay.
Quepem Deputy Collector Nilesh Dhaigodkar, while speaking to this daily, informed that two teams of surveyors have been constituted and stationed at Balli village panchayat and Barcem panchayat to carry out spot verification of the claims, which in turn are used to generate the plans.
He said that the teams were constituted in December, and so far 188 plans have been generated of the total 1,840 claims.
He further said that the office has already processed 44 files, and have been sent to the office of the Collector, South Goa, while 43 files have been processed and will be forwarded in the days to come.
He said that the team can do just about 75 spot verifications a month and the target is to finish the process at the earliest.
He further said that the process has also been simplified and only a self- declaration from the eldest of the family is sought as a part of the documentation process.
