Legal extortion

Never before had I heard that government has departments to carry out legal extortion of dues from defaulting members of public and institutions. And to my disbelief these extortions/recoveries are utter coercive to an extent of auctioning the immovable and movable property  of the defaulter to recover dues payable to government and other notified institutions and all within the legal ambit. The people manning these departments are not hired goons but government employees who occupy respectable positions in the society. The whole process of recovery in government is quite unlike what we hear some private banks and financial institutions resort to. Here the recovery man is not a ‘Dada’ but a gazetted officer with a team of employees who are paid salaries from government treasuries. He serves summons to the defaulter and holds court like judges and can issue arrest warrants to ensure presence of the defaulters. He can put a defaulter behind bars for contempt and absenteeism.

             So when I was dispensed the charge of Tehsildar (Recovery) of district Kangra along with other charges it came as a surprise. The job of T(R) is to recover dues from the defaulting general public and institutions which accrues as Arrears to Land Revenue (ALR). And while doing recoveries, T(R) is guided by two acts of Himachal Government i.e. HP Land Revenue Act, 1954 and The HP Public Moneys (Recovery of Dues) Act, 2000.

           On day one, I found T(R) branch was in total shambles with no set procedures and there were legal lapses at each stage of recovery process. The staff was hardly aware of the legal provisions and were riding on their luck to recover the dues as ALR. The branch recovers dues payable to many agencies who are our clients like Judicial Courts, Revenue Courts, Banks, Corporations, Public Sector Undertakings, Financial Institutes, any Department of Government i.e. Mining, and Industries etc. and any other body notified by the Government from time to time. These bodies and institutions were complaining of inordinate delay in recoveries by my office. There were no set procedure for initiating and completing recovery process, acts and rules guiding recovery process were not followed in letter and spirit, recoveries were miniscule when compared to time and energy spent, loss of collection charges, and shortage of staff was disheartening.

          Once in the very first week of taking over, I was holding the court and the recovery case before me amounted to around INR 8, 00,000/-. And the defaulter in late 50’s was paying INR 2000/- per hearing since last one year and pleaded to be poor and thus unable to pay the amount in one go but his revenue papers available with us said otherwise. In the open court I said this way it would take you around 400 hearings and that would be roughly 400 months or around 33 years to deposit the dues in totality. By that time I would have retired and Khadi Department to which you owe the amount would have shut down. People started laughing in the court. I threatened him to deposit the amount at earliest and not to fool around the court else the court would initiate auctioning of his properties to recover dues. He pled for next hearing and same was granted to him. In the next hearing he deposited INR 50,000/- and promised to pay remaining amount ASAP and submitted an affidavit to support his claim.

          After assuming the office, first thing I did was to go through the two guiding acts in detail and chart out a smooth and efficient recovery process. I figured out a simple process yet inclusive of all relevant aspects of law for future recoveries. The HP Public Moneys (Recovery of Dues) Act, 2000 has provisions for collection charges if dues are recovered for Banking Companies, Financial Institutions and for Public Sector Undertakings. This was totally ignored in the past resulting in loss for the government. These collections charges as per government notifications are 8 % of the recovery i.e. for every lakh a sum of INR 8000/-. Now we are collecting these charges from our relevant clients.

         Kangra is a huge district. Some of the areas are 90 odd kilometers away from the district headquarter. So far most of the hearing proceedings or court of T(R) was being held at headquarter. It was very difficult for the defaulters to travel all the way to headquarters every month to pay their dues or to attend the court proceedings especially for the poor. There are 8 sub-divisions in Kangra. We decided to hold court or recovery camps at five different locations each month i.e. Headquarter, Kangra, Indora, Dehra and Palampur. In future we plan to add one more recovery camp at Baijnath. This has actually increased the attendance and recoveries have actually shown an upward trend. For small time defaulters who were paying more on bus fares than in recoveries the idea of recovery camps has proved to be a blessing. It has also helped the senior citizens who instead of travelling to headquarter used to hire advocates for attending their hearings paying them extortionate fees.

           As far as staff shortage is concerned I needed a Reader and an Assistant for my office in addition to existing staff. Shortage was hampering the office work like drafting legal notices and issuing summons to be served on defaulters and keeping track of various other office processes and communications. Presence of an IAS heading the branch expedited the cause of securing the much needed manpower which has helped smoothening office working.

              Next task was to educate my staff about the procedures of recovery and the relevant sections of aforesaid two acts. This took me a couple of sessions and a bit of patience to get across the message. But all is well that ends well. We took a print out of the procedure which was drafted and got it framed and displayed in the hall where my staff works and in my own chamber. And I asked them to look at it every day in the morning while reporting for work. And to my surprise they have started quoting correct sections numbers and provisions of the acts in their file noting, notices and drafts. All the hard work has started paying off finally.

Recovery Camp at Indora. Kangra

On the personal front, this independent charge gave me room to experiment as well as to contribute in administrative innovation and business process re-engineering albeit in a small setup. Turning an office almost totally ignored to one generating revenues has been a fulfilling experience on a personal level. I tried parallel processing procedures instead of usual linear processing route in a government office which have started showing results. Many of the recovery cases used to be pending in the office for several years rendering the entire recovery process a costly and futile exercise. But now our target is to finish off a file within six months of its inception as per the procedure adopted. District of Kangra has many Stone Crusher Units on its south and south-western borders with Punjab. Mining Mafia operate many of these crushers. One of our clients is Mining Department. We get regular recovery cases from Mining Department against these Crusher Units which are in tune of crores. When my office initiated recovery process against these Crushers threatening them of seizing their plants or auctioning them for their default some paid their dues and many ran to High Court for stay orders. Some of them after paying their dues run the risk of shutting down their units for lack of profit. We have initiated new recoveries against these crushers in tune of 14-15 crores in last one month which will further tighten noose around their neck and will act as deterrence to rampant illegal mining in the area. The experiment has helped me understand that the one of the successful ways to make dent in government and to get your task done is patience and ability to find solutions within the given legal framework already existing as the system believes in self-preservation. We can tunnel our way through if we understand and apply existing laws with bonafide intentions. Trust me there lies a solution in government for every problem, the need is to find it silently and tactfully putting your grey cells in action rather than hormone levels. Being anonymous till one achieves the end does help a bit in government.