LAHORE: The Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR) has sought a report from the Lahore deputy commissioner (DC) into transfer cases of over 100 intermitted properties on complaints that patwaris in five tehsils of Lahore minted bribes from citizens for transferring intermitted mutations. The tehsils include Cantonment, Raiwind, Shalimar, City and Model Town.

An official said the issue surfaced at a time when the BoR reportedly revived the old Patwar system by almost abolishing the computerization of land records and posted land revenue officials at the recently launched Dehi Marakaz-i-Maal (rural revenue centres), also called Satellite Arazi Record Centres.

In Aug last, the Punjab revenue minister announced the recruitment of 5,000 patwaris across the province for the marakiz.

Earlier, the Punjab Land Record Management & Information System (LRMIS) was in place with a tier-3 data centre for computerized land records at the Arfa Kareem Technology Park, Lahore.

The computerisation of land records aimed at abolishing the monopoly of patwaris, forgery of documents and corruption/bribe.

The official said recently numerous complaints of bribes again started surfacing.

About the fresh complaints, he said, the patwaris of the provincial capital allegedly got Rs40,000 to Rs50,000 bribes for the verification of inheritance transfers of properties against each case.

During the verification, they used delaying tactics to compel the citizens to pay gratification to get the work done, he added.

The BoR was requested that if these transfers were investigated it will be easy to know what difficult circumstances the people have been through from the registration of the transfer of inheritance to the approval stage.

The official said the BoR was apprised that the stamp paper sellers and property dealers were also involved in this respect.

The BoR was requested to confiscate the record of the marked inheritance transfers to avoid interference or influence of the patwaris and other revenue officers. Punjab Senior Member of the BoR Babar Hayat Tarrar didn’t respond to calls and text messages.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2021