BRS fights to save Miyapur land, Revanth eyes auction

The Supreme Court upheld Telangana's ownership of 550.39 acres in Miyapur, ending decades of litigation. While the Revanth Reddy government plans to monetise the land, the BRS has highlighted its legal and administrative efforts to protect the public asset.

Hyderabad: Less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court delivered its historic verdict restoring the State’s ownership of 550.39 acres of prime Miyapur land, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy moved to claim credit for the prolonged legal battle. He also sought to use the outcome to target the previous BRS government and announced plans to monetise the valuable public asset.

The speed of the announcement stood in contrast to the decades-long fight to establish the State’s title. The previous BRS government had pursued legal and administrative measures to protect the land from alleged encroachments and fraudulent registrations. However, the Revanth Reddy government moved swiftly to explore its commercial potential, proposing to use the proceeds for irrigation, healthcare and education.

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The move has raised questions over the government’s priorities. A prime public asset, whose ownership the State had to defend through years of litigation, is now being viewed as a resource to be monetised. The BRS has maintained that the land should be protected for the benefit of the people rather than treated as a real estate opportunity.

The 550.39 acres are spread across Survey Nos 100 and 101 in Miyapur village of Serilingampally mandal. Official records dating back to 1912 classified the land as government poramboke.

Though parts of the area were later brought under the Paigah Jagir system during the Nizam’s rule, the grant conferred revenue-collection rights, not ownership. The land vested with the government after the abolition of the Jagir system in 1949.

Over the years, under successive governments in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, private parties and cooperative housing societies claimed portions of the land through inheritance, sale deeds, gifts and revenue entries. The dispute reached the courts in the 1990s. In 1997, the Special Court under the AP Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act ruled in favour of the government in key cases, describing the private claimants as land grabbers. The Andhra Pradesh High Court upheld the government’s position in 2003 and held that the land belonged to the State.

The private claimants challenged the High Court verdict in the Supreme Court in 2013. The civil appeals remained pending for more than a decade. The BRS (then TRS) government, which assumed office in 2014 after the formation of Telangana State, inherited the litigation and pursued measures to protect the land through legal, revenue and registration mechanisms.

A major turn came in May 2017, when the government uncovered alleged fraudulent registrations involving hundreds of acres of government land. The BRS government’s response to the May 2017 registration fraud went beyond the arrests of officials.

On the directions of then Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and local police launched a multi-agency investigation into the alleged nexus between real estate operators and registration officials. The ACB registered its first case on June 13, 2017, against former Kukatpally Sub-Registrar Rachakonda Srinivasa Rao for allegedly facilitating the registration of hundreds of acres of government land to private firms at undervalued rates. Subsequent raids reportedly unearthed disproportionate assets worth Rs 14 crore. The probe was expanded to cover other registration officials, with investigators recovering gold ornaments and property documents during searches.

The government also initiated a wider overhaul of the registration system. Chandrashekhar Rao ordered surveillance of all 142 sub-registrar offices across the State, while 29 sub-registrars and joint registrars were transferred or suspended. The ‘Anywhere Registration’ facility initiated by the then Congress government in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh was scrapped, and discretionary powers under Section 47A of the Registration Act were withdrawn.

The government maintained that the swift action had prevented the fraudulent registrations from translating into a loss of government land or revenue. With the 2017 scam exposing how easily the State’s existing, disjointed land administration systems could be manipulated, Chandrashekhar Rao ordered a complete overhaul of the registration system, which was the critical trigger for the creation and launch of the Dharani portal.

Simultaneously, authorities acted against those allegedly involved, including Goldstone Prasad, company directors and registration officials. The government also defended the cancellation of disputed general powers of attorney registrations before the Telangana High Court, which ruled in favour of the State.

The BRS government relied on historical revenue records, including the 1912 Sethwar and Khasra registers, to establish the State’s title. It also cited the fact that the original Jagirdars had accepted compensation after the abolition of the Jagir system.

The government placed Survey Nos 100 and 101 under Section 22-A (prohibited lands list) of the Registration Act to restrict further transactions. The Dharani portal, introduced in 2020, provided another safeguard by placing disputed properties in the prohibited category.

Senior Supreme Court advocate CS Vaidyanathan was appointed by the then BRS government to represent the State of Telangana before the apex court from 2017. Congress leader Salman Khurshid, ironically, represented the private parties claiming the land.

The Supreme Court, in its October 29, 2026, judgment in Bandari Ramchander and others vs Maitri Cooperative Housing Society and others, dismissed the private appeals and upheld the State’s ownership. It held that fraudulent revenue entries made after the land had vested in the government, without lawful transfer or mutation orders, could not confer ownership rights.

The verdict settled the State’s title to the 550.39 acres. However, the fate of the public property remains uncertain, with Revanth Reddy announcing plans to convert it into a source of revenue through monetisation to run his cash-strapped government.