GOAN MUTATIONS-4.
By Valmiki Faleiro.
Mutation, in law, is meant to be a simple process. But, your saga with a mutation application has been neither simple nor short. You’ve crossed the first two major hurdles: of getting your application entered in the Mamlatdar’s office and serving notices on the respondents. Don’t be euphoric about being close to the finishing line! There’s more in store. Enter the Circle Inspector. In babudom, he is one step higher than the Talathi and one rung lower than the Mamlatdar, even if he fancies himself to be more important than Digambar Kamat. You can’t blame the poor chap: his Mamlatdar regards himself as the President of the Republic.
By now, you’ve finished bribing everyone from peon, clerks, Talathi to Mamlatdar –but you haven’t yet “met” the Circle Inspector. Once all Form-X notices are served, and the Talathi finds the time to ‘put up’ your file, he is the bloke who checks your papers. He could come up with “objections” that are limited only by his imagination. Putting civil-law advocates to shame, he could solemnly pronounce that your Sale Deed is“defective.” How does one argue with a man who might have never heard about a Transfer of Property Act and would be as alien to the conventions of conveyance?
Permit me to share my personal experience at the Quepem Mamlatdar’s office. I am not easy with demands for bribe. I was told that sale deeds executed by me conveying title to my clients (on whose behalf I filed the bunch of identical mutation applications) were “defective.” When asked how, he pointed out to the first recital in the deeds, which described the entire property under its two Survey numbers. “How do I know which plot pertains to which Survey number?” he asked, a wee bit triumphantly. I took him to the annexed schedule that fully identified the plot sold to each mutation applicant by its specific survey number. “This must be mentioned in the main deed,” he said. So I took him to the first operative clause of the sale deed, which mentioned the plot’s survey number. He mumbled something under his breath. I smilingly said, “You are well conversant with conveyancing.” He smiled back. Both smiles were as spurious. Mine, because he knew crap about drafting sale deeds. His, for failure to browbeat a bribe from me. After some weeks, I was told that copies of my wife’s Power of Attorney were not attached.
Revenue officials are concerned only with names appearing in Form I &XIV, not with wives. In this case, only my name appeared. My wife was co-Vendor in the deeds by virtue of ‘communion’ of assets of husband and wife under the Portuguese Civil Code. Even if two of my plot purchasers had earlier got their mutations done without attaching copies of my wife’s Power of Attorney, I complied with this legal absurdity.They must have realised I was a hard nut. No further “objections” surfaced. Forget ministers, its pointless asking even senior bureaucrats to rectify the procedural mutation mess. I tried. I wrote to the state’s Revenue Secretary (an IAS officer, no less.) Forget action, there was not even a reply.
(More in the concluding part next Sunday.) Instead of simplifying, methods have been devised to herd people towards Talathis and Mamlatdars. The authority that promulgated the Record of Rights in F. I&XIV, the district collector, himself has held (in a quasi-judicial order) that the value of F. I&XIV is presumptive and not a proof of title. Evidence of ownership lies elsewhere, as in a Sale Deed. Yet,in a recent fad, municipalities and panchayats have begun insisting that the owner of a plot produce the F. I&XIV showing his/her name before applying for construction licence – even when an attested copy of the Sale Deed (based on which F. I &XIV ismutated) is attached. Don’t ask me who frames such new ‘rules’. Only their purpose is clear. (“Zor roddtta pejek,” if you understand the old Konknni adage.) Harass and milk the common man. If Goa and her public treasury are milking cows for politicos, it is the ‘aam aadmi’ for officials down the line. The law, they say, is an ass. A reflection on the guys who make such laws … the same ones you and I elect, election after election. (Only don’t forget that when we compare laws, legislators and donkeys, we’re being patently unfair to donkeys.) The ‘aam aadmi’ has a way to escape bureaucratic mutation harassment. He must“meet” a minister. Only that, unless he is closely related by blood or by politics, he will end up paying more than what he would have paid to all in the Mamlatdar’shierarchy. (To conclude.) (ENDS.)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column.
PIA MATILDE MENDES 
