Hyderabad: In order to curb cheating in real estate and to protect government land, revenue officials from the IT corridor are holding grama sabhas to mutate private and government ones and upload fresh records.
There has been no mutation (transfer or change of title in the records) for the last 25 years of a majority of private property or colonies, including Pra-shanthnagar, Safarinagar and Raghavendra Colony in Hafeezpet, and some colonies in Miyapur, Rai-durgam, Madhapur and Gachibowli. State records show the owners to be people of older generation.
The S.K. Sinha Committee on government lands had brought to light some encroachments. The report said that private landowners had occupied government lands adjacent to their properties.
Revenue officials will have to verify the records of 23,705 parcels of land in all the 26 revenue villages under the jurisdiction of the Serilingampally tahsildar’s office. Tahsildar S. Tirupati Rao said grama sabhas had been organised in the Kothaguda and Gopanpally revenue villages. “We received 24 applications (for mutation). There are many colonies in the 26 revenue villages. Records show the owners to be belonging to an older generation,” Mr Tirupati Rao said. He said that during the mutation process, the revenue department would identify the structures that were built on government and assigned land.
Farmhouse craze refuses to die down
A new trend revealed by the ongoing land survey is the huge number of farmhouses. Agriculture land parcels located on the outskirts of cities and towns have turned into farmhouses on which permanent structures have come up where recreational activities take place.
The land continues to be shown as agriculture land as per revenue records. The agriculture department which conducted its survey recently to identify farmers for the Rs 8,000 per acre per year scheme did not remove the owners of such lands from the list of beneficiaries.
The agriculture department officials only visited houses of land owners during survey but did not take up ground-level verification. The government ordered the comprehensive land survey by the revenue department after this.
In villages surrounding Hyderabad and falling under the Ranga Reddy district limits, over 2,000 farmhouses with permanent structures were found. Of them, no farming activity has been taken up in over 1,700 farmhouses even in vacant lands.
The towns which witnessed steep increase in farmhouses include Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Medak, Warangal, Mah-bubnagar and Nalgonda due to rapid urbanisation.
Industrialists, businessmen and film stars among others purchased land on the outskirts and built the farmhouses that are mainly being used for recreation.
