State govt tweaks Dharani portal to resolve land woes

Hyderabad: The state government has introduced tweaks to the Dharani portal to minimise criticism against the portal and curb allegations by Opposition parties of land grabbing.

Among the tweaks is the introduction of the TM32 module, which enables collectors to rectify errors in land mapping. Now, the state will hold revenue sadassulu (conventions) from November 20 to resolve landowners’ complaints.

Dharani was set up to check delays and irregularities in land registration and was initially well received. However, a slew of errors in manual entry of names, the extent of land, boundaries, gender and other criteria caused problems for landowners.

Compounding the issue was the inclusion of a few deeds in the prohibitory list, which restricted their transactions. Due to the lack of a provision to modify the same, landowners were facing several hardships. Continued petitioning and protests mounted pressure on revenue officials.

Against this backdrop, the state government instructed collectors to resolve claims on a priority. Collectors and revenue staff were engaged in the Dharani portal work for the past week, with Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar directing them to verify cases tied in court cases, acquisitions, allotments, ceiling surplus, endowment or Wakf Board land, and Inam lands.

In the case of acquired and assigned lands, collectors were asked to verify the national records and RoR (record of rights), respectively, to either retain or omit from the prohibited list. The government also directed collectors to remove Inam lands from the prohibited category only after the issuance of the ownership rights certificate.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Nizamabad collector C. Narayana Reddy said that genuine land issues will be settled soon. “We are verifying the all the documents available with the citizens and office. TM32 module in Dharani will settle all the problems arises due to human errors,” he said.