House panels yet to report

​Hyderabad: More than 22 months ago, the state government formed three House committees with members of Assembly and Council to probe the alienation of land in Telangana in general and Hyderabad in particular. However, all the three House committees have yet to table the reports.

Since the Assembly could not devote much time to discuss issues in depth, the House committees, which are called mini assemblies, were formed by drawing members from both the opposition and the ruling parties to conduct marathon meetings and submit the reports to the Assembly with their recommendations to avoid recurrence of such irregularities in addition to suggest action against the perpetrators.

Several thousands of acres of government and Wakf land have been alienated in the united Andhra Pradesh over the decades. Sizeable land in Hyderabad city alone was alienated to the individuals. During the discussion in the Telangana Assembly, several members pointed out these issues vociferously and demanded immediate action against the perpetrators.

Subsequently, the state government formed three House committees with MLAs and MLCs belonging to ruling and opposition parties on January 10, 2015 with each committee consisting of 13 members. Each committee was given tenure of three months to probe the irregularities in land alienation and submit the report to the Assembly.

A committee to probe the illegal sale and occupation of government land was formed with Medchal MLA Sudhir Reddy in chair. Likewise, Nizamabad MLA Bajireddy Govardhan is heading another committee to probe the alienation of Wakf land and Vardhannapet MLA Aruri Ramesh is the head of the third committee to probe the irregularities in the cooperative housing societies.

Notable point is all the three committees are getting extensions every three months for the last 22 months and not a single committee concluded its inquiry into the irregularities. It has been alleged that not a single committee is working wholeheartedly to complete the work.

Surprisingly, a number of opposition members like Maganti Gopinath and Rajender Reddy have joined the ruling party and MLCs like Arikela Narsa Reddy have retired from the council. Even the members point out that the House committees were not serious in taking the inquiry to the logical conclusion.

Expressing dissatisfaction over the performance of the committee on Wakf land, MIM MLC Syed Altaf Hyder Razvi pointed out that the committee did not meet even once during the last six months. The House committee members toured extensively in Medak district and issued instructions to the officials to take back the Wakf land.

“Not a single instruction was carried out,” he lamented. It was pathetic that the House committee could not even get the action taken report from the officials. Demanding that there be frequent sittings of the House committee, he pointed out that the officials were not serious since the sittings were not regular.

Congress MLC Shabbir Ali lambasted the government for alienating the Wakf land to private persons while forming the House committee to prevent alienation. He alleged that Deputy Chief Minister Mahmood Ali alienated the land belonging to Ajampur Masjid to some private persons.

In such scenario, he ridiculed the formation of the House committee describing it as mockery. Congress MLA D K Aruna said that it was distressing to note that there was no transparency in the functioning of the House committee.

The government was not serious to bring out the truth in alienation of Wakf land, she criticised. Speaking to The Hans India, Aruna said that the government did not furnish the information to the Assembly and Council members though the committee met four times so far.

So is the fate of the House committee which was formed to probe irregularities in cooperative housing societies. The committee met only four times during the last 22 months and these meetings were limited to introduction of members and finalising the terms of reference.

The committee has so far not received the details of the land owned by the housing societies, sanctioned layouts and registered documents. “What the committee would do if there was no information of any kind,” BJP MLA Chintala Ramachandra Reddy opined.

The House committee has become non-entity since the government and officials were not cooperating. For instance, even after the formation of the committee, a number of irregularities were reported in the Film Nagar Housing Society. The committee should work wholeheartedly to check this menace, he added.

The ground reality of the committee to probe into the illegal sale and occupation of government land is no different. The committee members discussed in several meetings about the land allotted to various industries, Bhoodan land, the government land and the land under litigation.

The committee is yet to decide to take the future course of action regarding the procedure to be taken up about the hundreds of acres locked in judicial courts. The committee has no legal support to deal with the assigned land. No wonder, the committee could not prepare its report even after nearly two years.

BJP MLA NVSS Prabhakar said that the committee would prepare the report at an early date if the government and the officials cooperated. With this kind of attitude of the government towards the House committees, common man anxiously waits for the report of the three committees to know the fate of the alienated land in Telangana.