PATNA, April 18 -- Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary has directed chief secretary Pratyaya Amrit to personally resolve grievances of agitating officers and staff of the Bihar Revenue Service (BRS) who are on strike since March 9. A senior official in the chief minister's office (CMO) confirmed on Friday that the chief secretary has been tasked with examining the long-pending issues that prompted circle officers (COs), revenue officers (ROs) and field-level employees - including ameens (surveyors) - to launch an indefinite stir. The action, which began on March 9 with mass casual leave by COs and ROs, has severely affected land-related services across the state. The core of the protest stems from a cabinet decision that bars qualified BRS officers from being posted as deputy collectors of land revenue (DCLR) and district land acquisition officers (DLOs). Instead, these key positions have been filled by officers from the Bihar Administrative Service, a move the revenue cadre views as a direct violation of service rules that entitle them to promotion after nine years of service. Bihar Revenue Service Association (United) (BiRSA-U) president Aditya Shivamshankar made the union's position clear. He said the officers are not against development work but are only seeking justice in their service conditions. "We are fully prepared for dialogue with the government," he said. "If the cabinet resolution on DCLR postings is withdrawn, the DLO positions are restored to the revenue service as per rules, and any suspension orders are revoked, we will call off the strike immediately." The agitation has hit ordinary citizens and the real estate sector hard. Work on correction of land records, mutation of property titles and fresh land measurements came to a virtual standstill. Before the strike intensified, more than 45 lakh applications for land-record correction, around 15 lakh mutation cases and nearly 10 lakh land-measurement requests were already pending - a backlog that has only worsened. The department claims that 589 out of roughly 1,100 officers have returned to work, but ground-level functioning in circle offices remains far from normal. Revenue staff say they want written assurances on their long-standing demands before they fully resume duties. The CMO official said that chief minister Choudhary is particularly concerned about the hardship being faced by the public. "He has asked for resolution at the highest level so that people do not continue to suffer," the official added. The urgency is heightened because the state government has begun the massive exercise of the next Census, and the revenue and land reforms department is the nodal agency for it. For now, both sides appear cautiously optimistic. Even as the revenue officers have signalled readiness to return to their posts the moment the new government shows a positive response, they made reiterated their demand to revoke suspension of 41 BRS officers, mostly COs, who have been suspended in three batches by the department owing to their indulgence in the strike. If the chief secretary's intervention yields a breakthrough in the coming days, the familiar hustle at Bihar's circle offices- where farmers, small landowners and property buyers line up for routine land documents - could return sooner than expected....