Telangana govt to use Benami Act provisions to confiscate land parcels

Hyderabad: The state government will use the provisions of the Benami Transactions Prohibition (Amendment) Act, 2016 to confiscate land parcels that have no valid ownership documents, in the soon-to-be taken up comprehensive land survey.

The government suspects such land parcels may be held by benamis. In the recent survey conducted by agriculture department to identify agriculture land holdings, no proper details of owners were found for nearly 9 lakh acres.

Agriculture officials took up a door-to-door survey of land owners in all villages to check whether the data on agriculture land holdings as per revenue records matched with the addresses and details given by owners.

The survey was done for two months till July and officials visited the owners several times to collect the details. They could not trace the owners of nearly 9 lakh acres.

Officials could gather the details of owners of only 46 lakh acres.

Officials suspect that some percentage of these land holdings might be owned by benamis; there are chances of owners migrating to other places in search of livelihood.

The TS government has recently announced that it wil take up a comprehensive land survey for three months from September 15 to purify revenue records.

Officials will now cross-check the agriculture department survey data with the findings of land survey to identify land holdings which have no ownership documents.

The government feels that once the land survey is completed, it will automatically reveal benami properties.

Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao already gave indications in this regard in the meeting of TRS MPs, MLAs and MLCs on Saturday by stating that the government will identify benami properties in the land survey and confiscate such properties.