Sarkar's land becomes Sarkari in Karnataka

BENGALURU: What's in a name? Plenty. Ask Vibhuti Sarkar, a 65-year-old farmer who was denied insurance coverage for the jowar crop that he had cultivated on five acres in RH2 (rehabilitation camp 2) in Sindhanur taluk of Raichur district last year.
Upon inquiry, to his shock he found out that his land had been marked as 'government land' in the pahani or record of rights, tenancy and crop (RTC) document, which was the reason for the denial.
An investigation by the revenue department found that lands of 727 settlers in three Bangladeshi camps were flagged as government land. All the affected bore the surname 'Sarkar'.
Bhoomi, Karnataka government's portal for land records management system, had promptly categorised the lands of all Sarkars as 'sarkari' or belonging to the government and their pahanis described their land as government land.
Vibhuti is among the 22,000 Bangladeshi Hindus who have settled in four rehabilitation camps - RH2, RH3, RH4, and RH5 - in Sindhanur taluk. Thousands of Hindus who had fled what was then east Pakistan, following atrocities they faced in 1971 when Bangladesh was born, were housed in refugee camps in seven states, including Karnataka, and each family was given 5 acres of land.
Upset at being deprived of his land and various government benefits, Vibhuti approached Prasen Raptana, a leader of Bangladeshi Hindus, who took up his case. Raptana wrote to the Raichur DC in December 2022, bringing to the government's notice the technical problem.
Raptana told TOI the 727 affected people are now unable to get MSP for crops from government centres, cannot avail crop insurance and are unable to mortgage land to raise loans. These farmers are dependent on this land but are being denied government benefits.
Raptana said people living in RH 2, 3 and 4 were affected by this technical glitch. In November 2022, the jurisdictional Lingasugur assistant commissioner also wrote to the DC requesting him to resolve the problem as survey settlements and land records department said that this had to be done through the DC.
Vibhuti and Pankaj Sarkar, whose lands are flagged as government land, said, "For no fault of ours, we're facing this strange problem. We spoke to the tahsildar who said it's a software problem and had to be fixed in Bengaluru."
The commissioner, survey settlements and land records, Shridhar C N, confirmed that if the name is Sarkar, Bhoomi considers it as government. He said this has to be resolved case by case on the website.