Dharani management to be handed over to State-owned agencies

Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is learnt to have asked officials to make arrangements in this regard and an official announcement is expected soon.

Hyderabad: The State government is planning to hand over operations of the Dharani portal to government agencies like National Informatics Centre (NIC), Centre for Good Governance (CGG) or Telangana Online Services (TG Online). Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is learnt to have asked officials to make arrangements in this regard and an official announcement is expected soon.

The contract of TerraCIS along with its technology and strategic partner Quantela Inc, which has been handling the management of Dharani portal, will expire in October this year. The Congress, which has been criticising the Dharani Integrated Land Records Management System including the website, had already decided to do away with the private company before making changes to the system.

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The new land records management system was proposed in 2018 and the Dharani portal was launched in October of 2020, to digitalise all land records and maintain them in a centralised storage. The previous BRS government also brought the Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Pass Books Act, 2020, popularly known as Record of Rights (RoR) Act, to bring reforms in land records management system. Initially operated by IL&FS, the management of Dharani website was later handed over to TerraCIS and then to Quantela Inc.

Sources said the decision to hand over the operations of Dharani portal to State-owned agencies was part of the reforms proposed by the five-member committee led by senior Congress leader M Kodanda Reddy. The committee was constituted by the State government soon after assuming power to study functioning of the Dharani portal and make recommendations for its complete overhaul. The committee is learnt to have completed its study and prepared a draft report with recommendations to be submitted to the Chief Minister.

As part of the reforms proposed by the committee, the State government will replace the Dharani website with ‘Bhu Matha’. The committee is also suggesting for enacting a comprehensive legislation governing land related issues, by bringing all the land related legislations of the Revenue department under one umbrella to ensure their effective implementation. Other recommendations include constitution of revenue tribunals, delegation of powers to the Tahsildars and establish a grievance redressal mechanism among others.