Kerala will review areas where land fair value was fixed excessively high, with the inspections included in the state government’s 100-day action plan, Revenue Minister A P Anil Kumar told the legislative assembly on Thursday.
The minister said steps had been initiated to complete the inspections within the stipulated time. The exercise is part of a wider process to revise land fair values across the state after the government identified flaws in valuations fixed in 2010.
According to the minister, the government has been collecting details from areas where land values were assessed as either excessively high or excessively low. The review is intended to identify errors in the existing valuation records and support corrective action at the district level.
Complaints about excessively high fair values are being treated as appeals, Anil Kumar said. District collectors are responsible for deciding these appeals in their capacity as appellate authorities.
The collectors are also taking steps to correct errors in the determination of fair value and provide relief to eligible landowners, the minister said. The process therefore combines area-level inspections with an appeal mechanism for individual complaints.
The government has not disclosed in the statement the number of areas or properties covered by the inspections, the total number of appeals received, or a completion date for the review. It also did not specify the revised values proposed for any particular district or locality.
The fair-value review comes against the backdrop of valuation records that have remained connected to the state’s land administration system since the 2010 exercise. By gathering information on both excessive and insufficient valuations, the government is examining errors in opposite directions rather than limiting the process to complaints of overvaluation.
For landowners, the immediate route for challenging an excessively high assessment is an appeal before the district collector. The minister’s statement indicates that the government is also pursuing broader inspections to identify areas where the valuation itself may require correction.
The announcement places district collectors at the centre of the implementation process. They will decide appeals, examine complaints and take corrective action in cases where the fair value was determined incorrectly. The state government’s 100-day plan is now the stated administrative timeline for completing the inspections.
The next stage will depend on the completion of those inspections and the decisions issued by the district collectors. The government is expected to proceed with measures to revise land fair values across Kerala after the review of identified high- and low-valuation areas.
