GOVT TO WEED OUT FAKE PATTADAR PASSBOOKS

Hyderabad: Spurred by the huge success in weeding out bogus white ration cards in the state, the government has asked the revenue department to launch a massive crackdown on bogus pattadar passbooks and title deeds on a war footing. Government sources said chief minister K Rosaiah directed all the department heads concerned to complete the exercise in the next three months.

The state government took the decision after thousands of farmers in Anantapur and Kadapa districts created bogus pattadar passbooks over the past three years and used them to avail themselves of crop loans, taking advantage of the poor maintenance of revenue records. Though the government has been trying hard to take up this exercise over the past six months, it got a fresh push this week with the state-level bankers and insurance agencies urging the chief minister to act tough by passing necessary instructions in this regard. The bankers informed the chief minister that they could not sanction loans to farmers as per the earlier projections as pattadar passbooks were neither updated nor represented the authentic land holdings.

The sources said the government allocated Rs 20.40 crore for printing the required forms (village account forms/Record of Rights forms) to update records in all 1,112 mandals as the computerisation of land records has been completed in all the districts only up to 2004. The revenue department has directed its officials to use the software developed by National Informatic Centre (NIC) for online transfer of registration data to talukas and for simultaneous updating of revenue records. It has also directed all the sub-registrars to furnish information regarding registration of land that has taken place for the past five years case by case to all the tahsildars within a period of 15 days. Apart from initiating several other measures to keep bogus title deed holders at bay, the state government directed the district collectors to provide bankers with a soft copy of the 1B register at the local level, display the list of loaners and loans sanctioned at the village level and also authenticate any doubts expressed by local bankers with respect to pattadar passbooks or other revenue records.

The district collectors had conveyed to the chief minister during the last weeks collectors conference that the action plan for updating revenue records and passbooks had been delayed due to bogus ration cards elimination process.
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Arogyasri scam: Govt move to shield the guilty
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Guntur: In a clear move to protect the culprits in the Arogyasri surgeries scandal in Guntur district, the state government has said action would be taken against the guilty only after a thorough probe.Curiously, a medical board appointed by the government had confirmed all the charges against the hospitals , which were allegedly involved in the scandal that broke out in November last. Sources said the government was under tremendous pressure not to press charges against the doctors.

Going by the way the government has reacted to the issue, it is difficult to assume that the guilty medical officers would be sent to jail, observed rights activist M Bhagya Rao. The vigilance and enforcement department sent a report to the government on December 1 last year suggesting initiation of tough measures, including booking of criminal cases against the doctors, for performing unwarranted surgeries under Arogyasri . This newspaper carried a report on December 2 highlighting the irregularities committed by three hospitals in the district managed by some Congress party leaders.

The department launched a probe into the malpractice following complaints that a large number of hysterectomy surgeries were being conducted on young women in the district in July 2009. The investigation found that BMR Hospitals, Nandana Superspeciality and Anjireddy multi-speciality hospitals performed nearly 590 surgeries of the total 1,141 conducted in the district.

A medical board comprising doctors of government general hospital was formed to look into the malpractice . Stunningly, 73 per cent of the surgeries were performed on women aged below 40 years which was strictly against the Medical Council of India rules. Unless its an emergency, such surgeries should not be performed on young women as it would expose them to chronic diseases, a member of the medical board not wanting to be named told TOI. Surprisingly, the government blacklisted only one of the three hospitals from the Arogyasri network in spite of a recommendation by the vigilance and enforcement department to debar all the three hospitals.

Vigilance SP Vijayakar in his report recommended to the government to book criminal cases against the erring doctors for performing unwarranted surgeries on women. Vijayakar told TOI that a 21-yearold girl underwent a surgery under Arogyasri , which exposed the hospitals urgency to make quick bucks.
The government paid around Rs 25,000 for each surgery and spent more than Rs 2.85 crore in the district alone. Of this, a huge Rs 1 crore sum was pocketed by these three hospitals alone, a source said.
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(SOURCE: TOI)