IAS officer Munish Moudgil, who was recognised by the Central government last week with the national award for e-governance, was transferred out as Commissioner of Survey, Settlement and Land Records on Thursday. Munish was posted as Secretary of the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms. KV Trilok Chandra, who was previously Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps will replace him.
As per reports, the decision to transfer Munish was taken after he implemented an interim measure to tackle the problem of clearing pending property survey requests. With 1.31 lakh survey requests pending for years and just 1,937 surveyors to work with, Munish deputed 97 surveyors to work for three months in different districts where the number of cases were higher. Sixty of them were sent to neighboring districts while others were posted in districts that were far from their homes and this appears to have made the government employees' association unhappy, Deccan Herald reported.
Munish was looking for a solution to ease the waiting time for citizens to get their land records surveyed. Typically, a surveyor is handed 23 cases in a month. But if cases are pending, new applicants have to wait through a system in which a waiting queue number is generated.
Currently at Hangal in Haveri, the waiting queue number is 1279 and in Athani it is 1064. In and around Bengaluru, the number is between 221-532.
However, the IAS officer's solution to deputise personnel for three months in areas where waiting queue numbers are higher did not go down well with the state's government employees association. CS Shadakshari, President of the State Government Employee Association, met the Chief Minister to appeal for Moudgil’s transfer, Times of India reported.
Munish was honoured just last week with the national award for e-governance for his over-the-counter issuance system for caste, income and residence certificates. He served in the post for four-and-a-half years.