Telangana’s promised land record Premium

Telangana’s Congress government is trying to streamline the land ownership process

Ever since the Congress government came to power in Telangana, it has taken a series of measures to streamline the land ownership process, rectify deficiencies in the previous system that had caused sleepless nights for farmers, and improve revenue administration.

Farmers began to struggle when, in 2020, the Telangana Assembly enacted the Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Passbooks Act, popularly known as the Record of Rights Act. The previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government had also introduced the Dharani portal, a land record management portal, billed as one-stop solution for land-related issues. However, the portal was rife with errors. There was often a mismatch between the physical records and the digitised records, and 18.36 lakh acres of land were pushed into the prohibited list even though farmers had been tilling them for decades. The portal was operated by a foreign company.

To make matters worse, the new law left no scope for grievance redress at the local level. The power of redress was mostly vested with the District Collector or Chief Commissioner of Land Administration. The BRS government also did not prepare rules for effective implementation of the Act.

Then the BRS government also scrapped the village revenue officers and village revenue assistants system, arguing that it was a residue of the feudal system and that the officers and assistants were fudging revenue records. Village revenue assistants had been helping revenue officials in villages with the collection of village revenues, such as agriculture tax and irrigation tax. The village revenue officers and village revenue assistants of 10,950 revenue villages across the State were removed overnight and accommodated in other departments. This hit revenue services at the grassroots level. This forced farmers to approach courts at different levels and as a consequence, the judiciary was faced with a pile of cases.

The government also faced allegations that BRS leaders were taking advantage of the loopholes in the Dharani portal to usurp lands from farmers at throwaway prices.

In short, land management became a messy affair.

Immediately after it came to power, the Congress government constituted a committee headed by senior party leader M. Kodanda Reddy to study the lapses in revenue administration and recommend measures to strengthen the system. The committee comprising experts recommended repeal of the Records of Rights Act and suggested that the Dharani portal be replaced with a new farmer-friendly portal, Bhumata.