Land Holders to Get Reprieve Under New RoR Draft Bill

Hyderabad: The Record of Rights (RoR) draft Bill 2024 has expanded its purview from government, jagir and non-agricultural lands to abadi lands (village commons, which implies land belonging to the village) unlike its 2020 version.

In its extension, the draft law accepts the record of rights prepared and maintained under the 2020 Act as deemed to be adopted under it and a separate RoR would be prepared for abadi lands.

Extending the rights on land not recognised earlier, the new draft apart from recognising rights acquired through sale, gift, mortgage, exchange, succession, survivorship, inheritance and court decree, also provides the same to lok adalat award, assignment patta (landsgiven by the government for enjoyment without right to sell), ORC, 38E (land over which tiller got rights after the end of Nizam rule), 13B (commonly called sadabainama lands, that is those who bought the land but recorded the transaction in a white paper without registering it), sale certificate and other modes.

Doing away with the denial of permission for correction of records the new one allows corrections in RoR and allows resolution of part B cases (there are 18 lakh acres of lands whose registration is barred).

The Bill empowers the deputy tahsildar to register the land along with the tahsildar. 13B (commonly called sadabainama lands) can also be regularised now.

While the 2020 Act did not allow scope of enquiry after auto mutation in case of a sale, gift, mortgage and exchange, the draft gives scope for holding mutation in case of fraud. Provision for survey and sub-division has now been mandated from the prescribed date in the new Bill.

The appeal provision, which was absent earlier, has been provided for in the new one and the affected parties should first approach the collector or the joint collector. A second appeal can be made before the CCLA (chief commissioner of land administration) or represented to the government. The sadabainama lands for which applications were filed before 2/06/2014 will be accepted.

The draft bill allows presumptive records to be shown for consideration as evidence for land record apart from registered documents. The provision, which allowed hiding of entries under right to privacy under old law, has been removed. The entries will now be made in pahani based on RoR for which there was no scope earlier.