Hyderabad: The registration of agricultural land in Telangana has come to a temporary halt as the state government has stopped issuing pattadar passbooks and title deeds to land owners. From September onwards, it will begin issuing new electronic pattadar passbooks, which will have enhanced security features, to check tampering of land details and curb fake passbooks, which has been rampant in the past two decades.
It will take another two or three months for the new e-passbooks to be printed, and in the meanwhile, those who want to sell their properties are not able to register them at sub-registrars’ offices.
The revenue department is currently engaged in an exercise of ‘purification of land records' in all districts to rectify errors in land records and land ownership. This began after the Miyapur land scam that surfaced in June, which exposed how government lands were registered in the name of private firms and individuals.
State has not issued specific instructions to stop registrations. Deputy CM and revenue minister Mohd Mahmood Ali said: “The government has not asked sub-registrars to stop registration of agriculture lands till e-passbooks are issued. We will issue fresh instructions to all sub-registrars to take up registration after thorough verification since genuine property sellers should not suffer in case of any urgency to sell their lands. There were complaints of sub-registrars not registering new land transactions but it was because the entire staff is engaged in correction of la-nd records and not because of any ban imposed on that.”
He said tenders for printing new e-passbooks will be called next week and the new books will be distributed from September. He said the new books have all the security features of a passport and gives no scope for any tampering of details.
This will help in eradicating fake passboos.completely from Telangana."
