Telangana government gives more teeth to Collectors

Hyderabad: Telangana State government has accorded full powers to District Collectors to oversee the functioning of Dharani portal and to also save the government lands from encroachment under the new Revenue act. District Tribunals headed by collectors will also come up soon to address all land related disputes. The district authorities will have to solve the land disputes within 60 days.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Thursday held a high-level review meeting at Pragati Bhavan on the maintenance of the Dharani portal and the measures to be taken to improve its performance. The CM said that except those pending in courts, the Collectors should solve all the problems of all the lands within 60 days, which were put under Part B during the Comprehensive Land Records Survey. If need be, the Collectors should undertake field inquiries and take decisions and finalise the ownership rights.

Under the supervision of Collectors, the CM wanted tribunals to be formed in each district to settle the cases of the revenue courts. The officials were asked to give an opportunity for companies, firms and other institutions to be set up in the agriculture lands to sell or purchase the lands through Dharani portal immediately. An opportunity to the NRIs to get the land registered on their names by registering their passport number and take out print out of EC, market value certificates should also be given.

KCR informed that in the two months period, 1.6 lakh people booked the slots and of them, 80,000 have already completed their registrations. The CM further said that there are 90 per cent of farmers who hold less than 5 acres of land in the State and the government's aim is to make sure that these farmers should be able to do the registration of their land and mutations without any problem.

Under any circumstances, the officials should not register tank lands, FTL lands, Wakf lands, forestlands, endowment lands to the private persons or parties. An option on the Dharani portal to inform the reason why an applicant slot was not booked should be given and if the changes and additions mentioned above are done, lands can be registered more efficiently through the Dharani portal, he added.