Close on the heels of his appeal for the public support, Bhatia today finally cracked down on the talathis and circle officers by directing the district collectors that suspension orders should be served to those who had been found guilty in a special campaign launched in November last.

Bhatia, who had launched the corruption free legal land rights registration campaign about three months back, had received about 86,213 complaints in Pune revenue division comprising of Pune, Satara, Sangali, Kolhapur and Solapur. The highest number of complaints were received from Pune district - 60,466, followed by 7.209 in Sangli district, 7168 in Kolhapur district, 5886 in Solapur district and 5,484 in Satara district.

Official sources said out of 86,213 complaints, the scrutiny of 23,000 cases had been completed so far. The scrutiny of 23,000 cases revealed that about 10,000 complaints were genuine. Serious irregularities like neglecting registered document of land ownership, inaccurate registration of ancestral rights, sanctioning registration without sending notices to the interested parties, deleting the names of sisters and brothers, registering the name of dead person and getting thumb impression of the dead person on the land records, were detected.

Bhatia had initiated action against the 158 officials involved in 107 ``very serious'' cases. In many of the cases, it was found that the revenue department had not even implemented the court orders. The sources in the revenue department told The Indian Express that Bhatia was expected to pay special attention to large-scale irregularities in land records in Pune district, from where he had received the highest number of complaints.

Bhatia's action is all set shake the entire revenue department since scrutiny of only one-fourth complaints had been completed so far. The sources said the scrutiny of about 53,000 complaints was yet to be completed. The sources in the revenue department said it was the first of its kind action in Maharashtra in which employees found involved in irregularities were facing action on mass scale.