Bandi sees bugs in Dharani portal

HYDERABAD: BJP state chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar said the Dharani portal was full of bugs but the Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao did not bother to rectify. 

He said the Dharani portal had served the purpose of the Chief Minister in alienating disputed lands in his favour. Sanjay Kumar was addressing a roundtable meeting organised at the party office on Sunday over the glitches being faced by the Dharani portal.

Speaking on the occasion, BJP leader Dharam Guruva Reddy said the Land Records Updation and Purification project (LURP), which was funded by the Central government under the Digital India initiative, was changed into the Dharani project by the state government. 

He alleged that the state did not conduct any new land survey. It just uploaded the land project data which was already available. He alleged that the Dharani portal was launched without testing the software and its efficacy. The revenue officials did not update the category-wise details of errors in the newly issued and unissued land patta passbooks and pending Aadhaar seeding, he said adding that mistakes and photo mismatch cases on the portal were complicating the ownership details of lands. Gummiraj Kumar Reddy and Manne Narasimha Reddy who were fighting for the permanent rights to assigned lands said while the state had 24 lakh acres of assigned lands, about 14 lakhs families were cultivating the lands. 

The majority of them belonged to the scheduled tribes and backward communities in the state, they said, and reminded that those who were in possession of assigned lands prior to 1958 had permanent rights over the lands.

Senior advocate Gopal who spoke on challenges faced by landowners said revenue laws in the state had several loopholes. He said the Dharani portal did not contain details about the type of lands whether they were podu lands or others. Dharani was designed to help corporate houses to acquire vast tracts of land. He said it was unfortunate that even the district collector or joint collector did not have any powers on the Dharani portal. He said a petition was being filed in High Court challenging the Pattadar Pass Book Act.

Some farmers who spoke at the roundtable meeting said the Dharani portal was displaying old landlords' names only, even though they had sold their lands. Buyers were facing problems in getting the lands transferred to their names. 20 lakh pattadars were facing issues without passbooks. They demanded that the BJP fight faulty acts and Dharani portal problems in the state.

Retired deputy collector Ram Gopal said village revenue administration had been rendered useless with the removal of patel and patwari systems. No one had any grip on the land records maintenance and administration, he lamented.