Revanth promises solution, but offers no immediate relief to 22-A land victims

Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy promised a permanent solution to the 22-A land issue but did not set a timeframe for resolving the wider controversy. He announced a high-powered committee, new regularisation policies and a survey of KCR family's lands.

Hyderabad: Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy promised a permanent solution to the 22-A land mess, but offered no immediate relief to thousands of private property owners whose lands remain frozen in the prohibited list. He announced a high-powered officials committee to examine 12 major categories of land disputes and several new policies for regularisation and registration.

He also ordered a survey of lands belonging to BRS chief and former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao‘s family, announcing plans to distribute excess land to the poor and the marginalised. While he fixed a 30-day deadline for the inquiry into former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s family lands, he gave no timeframe for the committee expected to address the much wider 22-A controversy.

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Participating in the short discussion on the 22-A lands issue, the Chief Minister said the prohibited list covered nearly 98 lakh acres, including 42.61 lakh acres of forest land, 29.35 lakh acres of government land, 24.63 lakh acres of assigned land and five lakh acres of endowment, Wakf and other lands, besides disputed properties. He said the current controversy concerned only 3.73 lakh acres of private patta land, which was being blown out of proportion unnecessarily.

He claimed the Congress government had reduced the extent of disputed private patta lands in the prohibited list from 7.91 lakh acres in 2020 to 3.73 lakh acres by 2026, while the Part-B extent had fallen from around 21 lakh acres under the BRS to about 17 lakh acres.

In a significant admission, Revanth Reddy said a majority of the private lands currently caught in the prohibited list genuinely belonged to their present owners. He blamed Revenue and Registration officials for the fiasco. He said the Revenue authorities entered the entire survey numbers into the prohibited list with only the extent of land due to a court case in the Telangana High Court.

He said the sub-registrars were given only the extent of government land without precise demarcation, resulting in entire survey numbers being blocked. “The sub-registrars are refusing to allow land transactions without clear demarcations, fearing suspension and ACB action if government land was wrongly registered,” he said, citing the Kancha Gachibowli example, where a dispute over about five acres allegedly affected registration of the remaining 2,395 acres.

The Chief Minister shifted the blame to successive governments, the previous BRS government, Dharani and officials. He said the problem’s roots went back to the Nizam era and the introduction of Section 22-A in 1999, while the BRS government and Dharani further complicated the records. He challenged the Opposition to state clearly whether government lands should be removed from the prohibited list.

He proposed e-KYC, email and newspaper notices and 15 days for objections before adding land to the prohibited list. He also promised new policies for ULC lands, unauthorised layouts, HMDA, GHMC and DTCP layouts, Singareni lands, GO 59 and GO 118 applications.

Alleging that former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s family owned around 440 acres, Revanth Reddy directed the officials to conduct a survey of these properties and submit a report within 30 days. He claimed that the former Chief Minister’s Erravelli residence included encroached government land. He also announced a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe alleged land irregularities in the Dharani portal during the BRS rule.

After a nearly three-hour marathon monologue in the Assembly, the Chief Minister concluded by promising future mechanisms, but without a clear timeframe for when affected owners can actually get their land back on the registration map.

Revanth Reddy’s promises

• New policy for partially regularised and unregularised ULC residential colonies, with regularisation and registration taken up simultaneously.
• Comprehensive system for HMDA, GHMC and DTCP-approved layouts and a new scheme for regularisation.
• Resolution of pending registrations in authorised layouts within a week after issuing fresh guidelines.
• District-level committee to examine land issues in the Singareni belt.
• Committee to clear about 1.22 lakh GO 59 applications, besides a new scheme for around 18,590 pending applications.
• Resolution of GO 118 issues in the LB Nagar area within a stipulated timeframe.
• Decision on houses constructed on assigned land after legal consultation.
• Mechanism for dealing with Indiramma houses constructed on government land.
• Registration of private patta lands where NALA charges had not been paid, after collecting applicable charges.
• New regularisation scheme for unauthorised layouts and encroached government lands.
• Committee within 30 days to examine freehold regularisation of leasehold properties in Secunderabad.
• New land-pooling scheme involving certain assigned, freedom fighters’, ex-servicemen’s and Bhoodan lands.