Telangana’s expanding 22A list leaves property owners, farmers in limbo

Property owners and farmers across Telangana have approached the BRS with complaints over the Section 22A prohibited list, alleging that wrongful land classifications have blocked registrations, bank loans, subsidies and welfare benefits, while some cases have raised allegations of extortion

Hyderabad: A retired ISRO scientist is unable to register a housing society plot he has held for four decades in Kukatpally. A tribal woman farmer has been denied renewal of a crop loan on nine guntas her family has tilled for generations. A builder says a Rs 120 crore payoff was demanded to release 19 acres near ECIL.

These are among dozens of cases people brought to the main opposition BRS at the party headquarters, Telangana Bhavan, on Friday, describing how the State government’s expanding Section 22A prohibited list has frozen land registrations, bank loans and welfare payments across several districts.

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Section 22A of the Land Registration Act allows the government to bar registration of land it classifies as government, assigned, endowment or otherwise disputed property. However, due to the unprecedented inclusion of their properties in the list, scores of property owners and farmers are finding no respite from the State government, even nearly two months after Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy admitted it was a mistake, apologised and assured them that the issue would be resolved.

In Vasanthanagar, Kukatpally, K Hanumantharao, a retired ISRO scientist, said construction and registration of a housing colony plot he purchased in 1985 were halted in March 2025 and February 2026, respectively, despite an earlier court verdict clearing the title. He said the District Collector told him the paperwork was in order but that instructions from the Chief Minister’s Office were blocking any movement.

In Yadadri-Bhongir district, residents of Vadayigudem village said 467 acres under survey number 518 were listed as Bhoodan land in December 2025, freezing roughly 10,000 residential plots along with the village’s temples, government school, panchayat office and anganwadi centre. They alleged that revenue records actually show only 20 acres as genuine Bhoodan land, with a circular inflating the figure more than twentyfold to justify the listing.

The freeze has also hit agricultural credit. In Kavtal mandal of Asifabad district, Bhimbai, a tribal farmer, said her bank refused to renew a crop loan and cut off fertiliser subsidy on her patta land after it was shown as assigned property, even though she had repaid Rs 19,000 in interest on the earlier loan. In Kaghaznagar mandal’s Bodepalli village, farmer Gadiyala Mallaiah said officials refused to mutate his nine acres, which he inherited across three generations, in favour of his sons, calling the land government property.

Allegations of extortion accompanied several cases. In Medchal, Someshekhar Reddy said a builder offered to clear the 22A tag on his 19-acre, roughly Rs 400-crore plot near ECIL only in exchange for 30 per cent of the land or Rs 120 crore in cash. In Kondapur, residents of Sriram Nagar Colony said sub-registrar office staff privately conceded that their 1985 layout, which was fully approved and registered for 40 years, should not be on the list at all, but still demanded Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh per transaction to push registrations through informally.

In Karimnagar’s Rekurthi village, where roughly 800 acres and up to 10,000 households have been listed since July 2025, resident Yedula Rajashekhar pointed out that the same revenue official who certified mutation of the land in 2003 later signed the order placing it under prohibition, this time on instructions from the State government.

The listing has also reopened settled welfare allotments. In Mancherial, residents said about 6,200 houses that the previous BRS government sold by registered deed to Singareni Collieries coal workers at nominal rates have been rendered commercially worthless after being swept into the town’s central Ganj area listing, alongside roughly 1,300 forest-land pattas granted to families in 2018.

Builders said the fallout extended beyond individual households. Akula Satyanarayana, a representative of the Telangana Builders Federation, speaking on behalf of developers in the Peerzadiguda municipal area, said decades-old approved projects have been frozen without consultation, triggering loan defaults. He cited the death of a developer by suicide after his 280-acre venture was stalled as evidence of the toll on the sector.