Hyderabad: Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Saturday gave officials a deadline of March first week to resolve the issues that were holding up 2.45 lakh applications in the Dharani portal. The Dharani committee, meanwhile, submitted a report pointing to the shortcomings in the portal and the law governing it as well as the hasty land survey which led officials to take short-cuts.
The handing over of land data to a private company, later renamed Terrasys Technologies, which later sold its shares to Falcon Investments, also came up for scrutiny.
He directed officials to make necessary arrangements in all mandal revenue offices and revenue divisional offices for the purpose immediately.
Revanth Reddy directed the revenue department to formulate terms and conditions for the disposal of pending applications by taking into consideration the suggestions made by the Dharani committee.
Revanth Reddy was speaking at a review meeting with the Dharani committee at the Secretariat on Saturday, with revenue minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy, chief adviser Vem Narender Reddy, committee members M. Kodanda Reddy, retired CCLA Raymond Peter, land laws expert M.Sunil Kumar and retired special grade collector B. Madhusudan.
Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari, revenue principal secretary Naveen Mittal, CM's principal secretary V. Seshadri, deputy collector's association president V. Lachi Reddy and senior officials were present in the meeting.
The committee submitted its report to the CM in the meeting, which mentioned flaws in the ROR Act (The Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Pass Books Act), passed by the previous BRS government in 2020.
It said the BRS government had conducted the land survey in three months and the haste was now creating problems. They said that the officials took the old survey records into account and uploaded them on the Dharani portal due to which the number land record disputes had increased.
Lakhs of land ownership problems have since come to the light, the report said. Due to this, even small typographical errors in the names of landowners had to be rectified only by district collector. The Dharani portal had removed the powers of MROs and RDOs to do so.
The committee brought to the notice of Revanth Reddy that the revenue department has given an opportunity to correct the mistakes in Dharani data through 35 modules, but farmers were facing difficulties due to the lack of understanding.
The committee said that lakhs of applications had already been rejected and it has become a burden for the farmers to pay a fee of `1,000 to correct each mistake. Sale of land parcels placed in the prohibited list was also taking place due to lack of coordination between the registration and stamps and revenue departments.
The meeting also discussed the misuse of crores of public money as the agriculture department took erroneous Dharani data as the standard and deposited Rythu Bandhu benefit in the accounts of farmers and landowners.
The committee recommended that the only option available was to amend the ROR Act or enact new legislation to correct the errors in the Dharani portal. Revanth Reddy replied that a decision would be taken for a permanent solution based on the final report of the committee.
Revanth Reddy ordered a comprehensive inquiry into the private agency which was running the Dharani portal. He questioned the BRS government for handing over the maintenance of the Dharani portal to the agency in the place of the Chief Commissioner of Land Administration. He expressed serious concern over the safety of the land records of lakhs of farmers.
The CM and Dharani committee members held a detailed discussion on the agency’s activities which went bankrupt later and changed its name to Terrasys Technologies Limited, changed the directors and then sold its shares to Falcon Investments.
Revanth Reddy enquired how the previous government had permitted the agency to change its name and ownership and whether there were rules for handing over the land records data to private companies.
He said it was astonishing that the company had won the tender for `116 crore in 2018 sold its shares for around `1,200 crore.
