LAND REVENUE ADMINISTRATION
consequence of the heavy arrears of peshkash which had accrued, Mr. (afterwards Sir Walter) Elliott was appointed under a special Act (X of 1849) as Commissioner with the powers of a Board Revenue, and the appointment continued until 1856. In February 1881 Mr. Carmchael, who was then a Member of Council, was made Special Commissioner to 'take the chief direction of affairs' throughout the tracts affected by the Rampa rebellion and in the Agencies of Ganjám and Vizagapatam, and was given special powers therein. His report was published in November of the same year.
As a result of Mr. Russell's mission, an Act (XXIV of 1839) was passed which (see p. 196) excluded the hilly portions of Golgonda and Pálkonda taluks (among other areas) from the operation of much of the ordinary law of the land, and the peculiar conditions existing in these tracts have always necessitated wide differences between the revenue methods introduced into them and into the rest of these two taluks.
When the Government took over these taluks and Sarvasiddhi, no immediate change was made in the settlements in force, the tenures in the hills remaining unaltered and the ryots in the plains being required to pay the same assessments as at the time of the forfeiture or. purchase, and new cultivation being charged the rates obtaining on adjoining land. In 1883, however, a beginning was made with the first scientific survey and settlement of Sarvasiddhi and the low country in Golgonda and Pálkonda, and orders on the settlement of all three tracts were passed in 1889.
This settlement was conducted on the usual principles. The soils were classified and grouped under the two main heads of black régada and red ferruginous, and were further subdivided into clays, loams and sands. The proportion in which each of these was found to occur in each of the three taluks has already been shown on p. 13 above.
For purposes of dry assessment, the villages were arranged into two groups, the first of which included 99 of the 127 villages in Pálkonda and the whole of Sarvasiddhi taluk, and the second the whole of Golgonda and tho remaining 28 villages of Pálkonda, which were in remote situations under the hills, inaccessible to ports and markets, unhealthy, and exposed to damage from wild animals.
For purposes of wet assessment four classes of irrigation sources were distinguished; namely,
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