BJP calls Dharani biggest land scam

 Hyderabad: The BJP on Friday accused the BRS government of committing one of the worst and biggest land scams in the country through Dharani portal and set up a cell at its party head office in Hyderabad to receive people’s complaints against the land records portal.

“We appeal to those who have lost their land to file the complaints via email on dharnicomplaints.bjp@gmail.com or on the WhatsApp numbers -- 9391936262, 7330861919 and 9281113099," the BJP said in a statement.

BJP state election in-charge Prakash Javadekar said that the software for computerising record of rights, developed by the Centre through the National Informatics Centre was available to all the states with power to modify as per the status of land record system.

The BRS government had asked a IT major to modify the software, he said. After three months, the company gave up the project because of undue pressure by the government.

It is learned that the demands for modification were made to the by-pass system, procedure, rules, checks and balances. After the company’s withdrawal, a business conglomerate was brought in. “After the bankruptcy of the conglomerate, the software was handed over to an unknown, mysterious company’ called TerraCIS, whose ownership is questionable,” he said.

"As the checks and balances were removed, ways and means were created to manipulate rules and thousands of land records got changed,” Javadekar alleged. This happened with private land, land belonging to the farmers, the government, temples, industries, ex-servicement and freedom fighters, as well with lakes, evacuee property, Paigah lands, blue book lands and assigned land, he said.

State BJP chief and Union minister G. Kishan Reddy said an app owned by a foreign company had acquired the rights to digitise property documents. “This app mined data, exploited systemic weaknesses and used sequential scanning of codes. Everybody knows that mining of government data is not allowed to any private company. But precisely, this was done in Telangana,”

Kishan Reddy said “no gram sabhas were conducted for validation of land records in Dharani portal. As a result, many survey numbers are missing. There is no proper redressal mechanism. At least 10 to 15 lakh khatas are notional and lakhs of acres of land classified in prohibition."