Telangana gets tough on illegal layouts, bans registration of unapproved properties

Hyderabad: In a desperate bid to curb unauthorised layouts and structures, the Telangana government has decided to prohibit the registration of such properties with immediate effect.

T. Chiranjeevulu, Commissioner and Inspector General, Stamps and Registration, on Wednesday issued a memo to all sub-registrars directing them to not register plots or structures that have no valid permissions issued by the competent authorities, municipal or panchayat whichever is applicable.

In the memo, the commissioner made it clear that unless valid permissions are produced by the seller, the registration of property should not be done even if it was duly registered previously.

Legal experts, however, feel that the memo may not stand judicial scrutiny as the Stamps and Registration Act has no provision for such prohibitive actions.

“The objective of the government to curb illegal layouts and structures that have come in the way of a planned development is good. But if someone challenges in the court, it would be difficult to defend the ban as the legislation holds precedence over a memo, which can not be contrary to the provisions of the law,” the experts pointed out.

They also claim that it would not be easy to amend the Stamps and Registration Act because the issues relating to transfer of property other than agricultural land and the registration of deeds and documents come in the concurrent list.

Even if the state government wants to amend the Stamps and Registration Act, it is not easy as registration of properties is in concurrent list. The Centre will not allow any provisions in the State Act that are contrary to the Central Act.

Ironically, Chiran-jeevulu sought to derive powers from The Tela-ngana Municipalities Act,  2019 and the Telangana Panchayat Raj Act, 2018, but made no mention of any of the provisions of the Stamps and Registration Act.

According to the memo, Section 172(16) of the Telangana Municipalities Act, 2019 stipulates that “no new plot or sub-division shall be registered by Registration Authority unless it is approved by the authority as per the provisions of the Act.”

Further, it said that 178(3) of the Telangana Municipalities Act, 2019 stipulates that “the Registration Authority shall not register any building or structure or part of the building without the production of a sanctioned plan approved by the municipality.”

The government, however, decided to register plots regularised under the Layout Regularisation Scheme brought out by the government from time to time and similarly the structures regularised under the Building Penalisation Scheme. The memo also exempted the structures built in the “gram kantam” areas from the prohibitive list.