West Bengal Settlement Kanungo Association and West Bengal Sub-ordinate Land Revenue Service, Grade-I Association formed Joint Council in the year 1976 at the meeting at Krishnanagar, Nadia for achievement of their Charter of Demands particularly the formation of State Level Land Reforms Service. A noteworthy achievement of the Joint Council was approval of Special pay by the Government for the cadres. In course of time through several programmes of movements, the Joint Council got merged into West Bengal Land & Land Reforms Officers’ Association on 4th of May,1980. The administrative set up comprising the Kanungos at Settlement wing and JLROs / SLROs at Management wing continued till the formation of Integrated Set Up in the late 80s’ wherefrom the basic cadre of WBSLRS Grade-I was redesignated as Revenue Officer. Under the present situation Revenue Officer is promoted to the post of Special Revenue Officer-II who function mainly as Block Land & Land Reforms Officer and further on promotion to the post of Special Revenue Officer-I who function mainly as Sub-Divisional Lands & Land Reforms Officer and Deputy District Land & Land Reforms Officer.
The officers comprised in the Association serve the various offices under the Integrated Set Up as formulated by the L&LR Dept. Besides, the officers also may have the opportunity to serve the Land Acquisition Wing as well as the Compensation Wing as functioning under the supervision of the various Collectorates. Other than these as stated, the officers may also serve the offices under the Rent Controller, Thika Controller at Kolkata or as Enquiry Officer at The Secretariat and even under Director, Indo-Bangladesh Border Demarcation. There is also scope to serve the Urban Land Ceiling offices under the various Competent Authorities under ULC (&R) Act, 1976.
The Association is basically a pressure group(as are/should be all trade union fronts) logically striving for the betterment of service prospects, service conditions and service orientation of the stated grades of officers.
The basic objectives of the Association, are, viz :
i) Striving for the betterment of service prospects of the officers it represents so that the officers may through their gradual seniority/merit based upgradations rise to the top hierarchical positions of the L&LR Dept.
ii) Ensuring that the officers are not subject to any sort of authoritative bias and whims in matters relating to transfer, posting, indictments and broadly assuring that the cadre as a whole is not subject to any sort of gross anomaly in respect of career prospects.
iii) Constantly harping on the constitution of State level Land Reforms Service so that the grass root level officers with their knowledge and experience of practical work may serve the positions of policy formulation and supervise the positions of policy implementation for that would ensure better public service.
iv)On issues of general employees’ interests, the Association always stands for the principles of welfare State governing the employer-employee relationship.
v) On various issues involving society, polity, etc. which creates ripples in public life, the Association independently forms its opinion and registers its reaction as dictated by the members.
vi) The Association publishes a bi-monthly organ ‘Bhumibarta’, covering all the relevant socio-economic-political issues apart from ones of Association-related affairs. The Association has also published a set of Compendium of two volumes consisting of necessary Government orders and circulars and a book on Kolkata Khasmahal land.