Telangana under siege

Hyderabad: Land scams seem to be haunting the Telangana government. Recent efforts of the government have brought to light the menace of encroachment of lands in the districts also. As per the latest details, the encroachers usurped over 5,000 acres of government lands in the realty booming districts of the state.

Taking cue from the infamous Miyapur land scam unearthed in Hyderabad recently, the Stamps and Registrations Department in coordination with the Revenue Department has conducted a study on the status of government lands in the old Karimnagar, Nalgonda, Khammam, Nizamabad, Medak, Warangal and Mahbubnagar districts. Prima facie, the officials found that the lands were gobbled up by realtors and influential political leaders in collusion with the Sub Registrars(SRs).

Top officials of the Registration Department told The Hans India that the documents related to the land registrations have been thoroughly scrutinised. In some cases, the government land records in the Revenue Department were tampered with and got the land registered in the name of individuals. In other cases, the government lands were registered in the name of private persons without even consulting the Revenue Department.

In Karimnagar district alone, nearly 1,000 acres of the government land was illegally occupied.
In Nalgonda, around 900 acres, followed by Warangal and Mahbubnagar with 700 acres each and in Nizamabad, Medak, Khammam districts around 1700 acres were encroached upon.

The officials said the details of the illegal registration of the government lands have already been forwarded to the local Revenue authorities to ascertain the role of the Revenue officials in the encroachments.
Since many land records gone missing, the Revenue Department was struggling hard to establish the illegal occupation of lands with sufficient documented evidences.

The Revenue Department already challenged the ownership of land in the courts recently. The officials said that the illegal occupation of lands also resulted in loss of crores of revenue to the state exchequer. The SROs reduced stamp duty during the registration of lands as the officials were given the sole authority to decide the duty.

The two departments are busy preparing the list of government lands encroached case by case. After compiling the data, the officials said the quantum of total lands encroached appears to be more than 5,000 acres. The government already got a report on illegal registrations from the ACB which conducted searches at all SROs and is now analysing the data in detail.

A meeting of the officials of the Registration, Revenue and the ACB would be conducted to finalise the details of the land encroachments in August last week.