Hyderabad: The revenue task force headed by retired IAS officer S.K. Sinha constituted by the TS government to probe into irregularities in land allocations and encroachment of government, endowment and ceiling lands in undivided AP has submitted its report after an 18-month exercise.
The report has been referred to Chief Minister’s Office. Officials are maintaining utmost secrecy over the contents of the report saying that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao plans to table it in the Assembly session in September and initiate a debate in the House on how valuable lands in Telangana were alienated for throwaway prices and how they were misused by rulers in undivided AP and the steps needed to be taken to recover them.
Revenue sources say the committee has recommended that the government should initiate measures to immediately take back 5.90 lakh acres, which are free of litigation. It also recommended that 16,288 acres, that were allotted earlier, be taken back as they were either unused or not used for the purpose for which they were intended.
It recommended taking back land worth Rs 7,800 crore in Ranga Reddy, Nizamabad and Medak districts. The committee put the total government lands in TS at 35.67 lakh acres, of which 13.80 lakh acres were not suitable for agriculture.
Of this, about 98,169 acres of assigned land was sold to private individuals by over one lakh assignees in the past few decades in the state and about 10,000 acres of government land had gone into private hands.
This apart, there is another 10,000 acres of ceiling land under encroachments.
Over 49,000 acres of Bhoodan lands have also changed hands.
Another 14,500 acres of endowments lands were also encroached upon.
The committee recommended government to set up a dedicated legal cell at state and district-levels to fight legal cases in courts to reclaim government lands.
