PANAJI
Giving legs to his initiative to speed up disposal of the backlog of mundkarial cases within the next two months, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant along with Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel and Revenue Secretary Sandip Jacques, IAS, held a brainstorming session with top revenue officials where they resolved to iron out the logjams and procedural hiccups that impede speedy disposal of cases.
At the meeting, it was decided to amend rules and if need be tweak the principal law even to do away with certain procedural duplication experienced by mamlatdars and joint-mamlatdars presiding over the quasi-judicial courts, a senior official told The Goan.
North Goa Collector, Geete, IAS, South Goa Collector Asvin Chandru, IAS, several deputy collectors officiating as sub-divisional officers or magistrates and a handful of mamlatdars attended the meeting.
Mundkarial cases have a pendency of some 1,000-odd in South Goa and another 920 in the North.
At the meeting, Sawant issued directives to fill unmanned positions at the joint mamlatdar level in all the talukas where mundkarial cases are pending and reiterated his diktat to clear all the backlog within the next two-three months, one official who was in attendance said.
In the discussions at the meeting it emerged that at least nine such joint mamlatdar positions are vacant and instructions have been issued to the personnel department to depute officials there.
In Pernem, Joint Mamlatdar-I office is vacant while in Bicholim and Bardez, the offices of Joint Mamlatdar-II are vacant. Again in Sattari there is no official posted in Joint Mamlatdar-I office whereas Tiswadi has a Joint Mamlatdar-IVV office which is vacant.
Down South, Salcete has the office of joint mamlatdar-II and joint mamlatdar-V which is vacant whereas Ponda and Mormugao have their Joint Mamlatdar-II vacant.
The issue of pendency of mundkarial cases came to the fore when Mandrem MLA Jeet Arolkar raised the matter before Sawant last month as several litigants from his constituency heckled him on the vexed issue.
