More than 400 acres of govt lands registered to realtors

Anantapur: An unholy nexus between a section of the Revenue department and its sub-registration offices in the district and the realtors is resulting in looting of huge chunks of government lands worth crores of rupees. The land scam centered around the offices of the sub-registrar in the district and had been going on unabated.

'The Hans India' which has in its possession documents which gave details of illegally registered government lands. About 400 acres of government lands stand illegally registered in the name of the realtors with the tacit support of a section of the revenue officials. The district has two Registrars, one in Anantapur and other in Hindupur working under DIG of Stamps and Registration apart from another Registrar in-charge of Audit department.

The Audit department which is supposed to audit the transactions in the Registration department surprisingly has not pointed out any irregularities which has had happened over the years. Illegal registration of government lands has been going on from 1990 to till date.

The government lands registered in acres include Itukalapalle 114, Kakkalapalle 68, Govindapalle in Bukkarayasamudram mandal 115, and Kodimi 60 acres. The value of land is anywhere between Rs 50 lakh per acre to Rs 3 crore depending on its proximity to the district headquarters.

To mention a few transactions, 5 acres of government land was registered in favour of a private party in survey number 10/2 in Govindapalle village in Bukkarayasamudram mandal in 2007.

Another 5 acres and 3.41 acres was registered in the survey number 10/2 in the same village and mandal. The list is endless. 6.29 acres of government land in survey number 191/1202/1B was registered at Kodimi village in Anantapur rural in 2009 and another 5.5 acres in survey number 74/1 was registered in 2014.

In survey numbers 78/1 and 78/2A, an extent of 3.28 acres was registered at Kodimi village in rural Anantapur in 2014. To an extent of 3 acres of government land was registered in survey number 213/3 in 2011. In 2012, 2.5 acres was registered in the same Kodimi village in survey number 262/3A.

In Kakkalapalle village in Anantapur rural in survey number 53/12, an extent of 126.32 square yards of valuable site was registered in 2013. There are hundreds of such registrations of lands extent from 100 to 2,000 or more square yards of land on the outskirts of the Anantapur city.

These precious lands which were supposed to be used for public purpose was deliberately registered to private parties to amass personal wealth. Services of out-sourced workers were being used for cash transactions in the shady deals.

The Stamps and Registration department although is far ahead of other departments in giving revenue to government but its illegal registration of government lands is depriving the government of the precious land bank which it needs to cater for public purposes.

In Hindupur registration office, the story is the same. One such example is in Kodikonda, 5.41 acres of government land had been registered in 2014 in survey number 38/3A and 38/3B and another 4.17 acres in the same village in survey number 12/1 in 2013.

165 acres in Rayadurg and 20 acres in Kodikonda of government lands had been registered in favour of private parties. Post bifurcation of the state, land values have increased even in a backward district like Anantapur as the industrialists making a beeline to the district for land allotments for industrial ventures.

By Ravi P Benjamin