Bhumata Portal in the Pipeline for TS

Hyderabad: The Congress, in a major overhaul of the revenue department and land administration, is set to replace the Dharani land portal with its Bhumata portal, seeking to streamline operations and make it people-friendly by eliminating hardships in getting records corrected in rural pockets.

With the Congress having promised the abolition of the Dharani portal in its election manifesto, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy is set to hold a meeting with revenue department chiefs on steps to replace the Dharani portal and make the new portal “people-friendly, foolproof and corruption-free”.

Among the slew of changes brought in by the BRS government since the formation of Telangana state was the use of the Dharani portal, abolition of village revenue officers (VROs) and village revenue assistant (VRA) system, and withdrawal of powers to mandal revenue officers (MROs) and revenue division officers (RDOs) on land matters.

While the centralised system sought to make transactions transparent, farmers and landowners faced hardships due to the lack of a grievance redressal system at the village and mandal levels.

With only district collectors empowered to address land issues, farmers and landowners were hung out to dry as those seeking correction of records could not always get a meeting with the collector, who had to oversee multiple administrative issues.

In many instances, collectors also failed to address complaints and directed the people to approach the office of the chief commissioner of land administration (CCLA) in Hyderabad.

This caused a multiplicity of problems for the poor farmers, as they not only had to brave long lines at the CCLA office in Nampally, but had to bear the additional cost burden of commuting to Hyderabad and getting accommodation for at least two to three days, to meet CCLA officials. While the CCLA office introduced a token-based appointment system, farmers said it was not of much benefit.