Survey of podu lands gathers pace in erstwhile Warangal

Warangal: With the State government’s commitment to resolve the contentious issue of podu lands, the Tribal Welfare department in coordination with the Forest, Revenue, and Panchayat Raj departments, has begun a survey of podu lands in Mahabubabad, Mulugu, Jayashankar Bhupalpally, Warangal and Hanamkonda districts carved out of the erstwhile Warangal district. Though the survey is […]

Warangal: With the State government’s commitment to resolve the contentious issue of podu lands, the Tribal Welfare department in coordination with the Forest, Revenue, and Panchayat Raj departments, has begun a survey of podu lands in Mahabubabad, Mulugu, Jayashankar Bhupalpally, Warangal and Hanamkonda districts carved out of the erstwhile Warangal district.

Though the survey is at the initial stage, staff from these departments are regularly visiting the villages to find out the actual people in possession of the podu lands before the year 2005. They are working under the guidance of the District Collectors of the respective districts. Since an app was developed to record every detail pertaining to podu lands, officials are using the app and uploading the information every day.

Speaking to ‘Telangana Today’, a senior official from Mahabubabad said 120 teams were formed to carry out the survey in 320 habitations under 152 Gram Panchayats limits in the district. “We received applications from 34,800 people who are claiming rights over 1,16,000 acres of land, which is the highest in erstwhile Warangal district. We are likely to complete the survey by November 30,” he said.

“Though the podu land survey was done in 2008-09 and titles were given to the podu farmers, no authentic data is now available with the government. In view of this, we are entering every detail using the app to make a digital file for the record,” he said.

According to official sources, nearly 1.05 lakh people have made applications claiming rights over three lakh acres of the forest land (podu) in the five districts of erstwhile Warangal district. “People are seeking rights over 90,022 acres in Mulugu district, while 25,021 people are claiming rights over 73,842 acres of the land in Bhupalpally district and 7470 people made applications for rights over 22239 acres in Warangal district. Only 777 people from Hanamkonda district are seeking the rights over nearly 1500 acres of the land under Forest Rights Act (FRA),” they said.

Meanwhile, Forest officials said some people were still trying to encroach upon forest land believing that they would be given the titles. “We are warning those people who are trying to cut trees or clear bushes in forest areas to claim the rights now, not to do so as it would land them behind bars,” said Bhupalpally District Forest Officer (DFO) Bhukya Lavanya. She also added that they had recently thwarted several such attempts in Palimela and Bhupalpally mandals, and even booked cases against perpetrators.

The rights over the forest land will be given to the farmers only after scrutiny and passing through three levels of checks—the Gram Sabha, the sub-divisional level committee (SDLC) and the district level committee (DLC). Only about 50 percent of the total applicants were given land titles under the FRA in the State 2008-09.