80-year-old maps decide which structures are demolished in Dehradun

DEHRADUN: On an overcast morning in Dehradun, Ramkishore Sharma (name changed on request), heading a five-member team comprising officials from Public Works Department (PWD), Municipal Corporation, irrigation and other government departments, arrives at Chakrata road to mark the encroachments there. It is part of the ongoing anti-encroachment drive in the city. What decides the fate of thousands of structures along the British-era roads of the city is an 80-year-old map on a cotton cloth.
As Sharma tries to gauge the width of the road on the sullied piece of cloth with a scale, local residents huddle around him, trying to catch a glimpse of the map.The cotton cloth is the map of one of the many villages which are now a part of the city of Dehradun.
Why, after all, are 80-year-old maps used? Because there are no other maps available, explain officials in the district revenue department. Sharma said, “These are the only maps available with the revenue department. I use this scale to gauge the width of the roads and after physical verification, if we find that the roads have shrunk because of a building or some other structure, we mark it as an encroachment.” There are seven teams like the one headed by Sharma, and in the last one and half month, they have identified more than 6,000 encroachments in the city using the very same method of referring to 80-year-old maps.
An official from the revenue department, who did not wish to be named, said, “We have two maps with us. One was created after surveys in 1938 and the other was updated after fresh surveys in 1992-93. However, because there are many villages whose revenue records have not been updated (which means the maps were not updated either), we refer to the 1938 maps.”
The district of Dehradun has 424 villages and is divided into two parts: Parvadoon (to the East of Rispana River), which has 193 villages, and Pachhwadoon (to the West of Rispana River), having 231 villages. After examining the revenue records, TOI found that there are more than 65 villages whose revenue records have not been revised since 1938. Even revenue officials could not explain why.
Meenakshi Patwal, SDM Mussoorie and assistant record officer, said that every time a new village is made a part of the district, a filed survey is done by the tehsildar and a map is made. “But since most of these villages have been a part of the district for years, no new survey was done,” she said.
Once the demolition drive started in full swing, another map-related problem emerged. Residents rushing to the revenue office, seeking older maps, found that some of them were in Urdu. According to reports, some residents were even handed wrong maps because the revenue records section does not have an Urdu translator.
MDDA secretary PC Dumka said, “The MDDA’s maps are updated every twenty years because we come with an updated master plan in that interval. Land usages change with every master plan. For example, agricultural lands are sometimes declared residential or commercial, but this does not reflect in the revenue maps.”
In revenue records, many prominent roads are shown to be narrower than they actually are. One glaring example is that of the Chakrata road, which is around 30m wide, but is less than 20m in the revenue records. SDM Patwal explained that the PWD had acquired some land along this road and widened it after the records were made. “And while the PWD updated its own map, revenue records remained the same,” she said. The entire encroachment marking process is ripe with such contradictions.
All the officials TOI spoke to said that there needed to be a single map for the entire district and if one department made any changes to the current status, other departments would have to follow. “For example,” said Dumka, “If the PWD has widened a road, the system should be updated and so should the revenue records. Similarly, if the MDDA changes the land use of an area, it should be updated into the system and the revenue records should be updated as well.”