“I am alive, not dead,” says 53-year-old Irappa Nagappa Abbai, whose simple plea highlights a troubling bureaucratic error that has left him officially declared dead for the past five years. The sugarcane farmer from Sutagatti village in Savadatti taluk is now fighting to prove that he is very much alive.
Irappa discovered the mistake in 2025 when he visited the Murgod office in Belagavi district to collect documents required to apply for a government drip irrigation subsidy scheme under the minor irrigation department. If approved, he was eligible for financial assistance of up to ₹3 lakh. To his shock, he was told official records showed that both he and his son had died on July 8, 2021.
This entry has made him ineligible for government benefits, forcing him to spend the past five months travelling between the Murgod Nada Kacheri and the Savadatti tahsildar’s office, a journey of nearly one-and-a-half hours each way, trying to get the error corrected. Officials informed him that such corrections require a formal procedure and cannot be done instantly at the local level.
An inquiry later found that the mistake was made by the village accountant, who had wrongly entered Irappa’s death in the government database. Savadatti tahsildar Mallikarjun Heggannavar told TOI that a notice had been issued to the official concerned and a departmental probe ordered. “If negligence is established, action will be taken,” he said.
The tahsildar confirmed that Irappa’s son had died in 2021 and while issuing his death certificate, the village accountant mistakenly marked the father as deceased as well. “After Irappa approached me, I accepted his request and began the correction process. A report has been sent to the district statistical office in Belagavi and forwarded to Bengaluru. The rectification may take about 20 days,” he added.
Irappa said the clerical error has kept him from receiving welfare benefits for several months. “I wanted to apply for the drip irrigation scheme for my farm, but because I was shown as dead in records, everything stopped. This mistake has cost me nearly six months,” he said.
