Hyderabad: Revenue authorities said the state government had taken several safeguards to prevent litigation, malpractices and corruption while deciding to regularise sada bainama (plain paper) transactions. According to the documents put out by the chief commissioner for Land Affairs, the regularisation is limited to agriculture land located in rural areas.
The tahsildar should conduct a discreet local inquiry in the village with regard to cases where the name of the possessor of land is not in revenue records though he is possession of the land for 12 years. The tahsildar should record the statements of villagers and neighbouring land owners. Mr M. Sunil Kumar, state director of Landesa, a rural development institute, said, “We cannot rule out the possibility for litigation, but, overall, the scheme will prove beneficial to the genuine poor farmers are facing hardships in availing the welfare schemes of the government due to the non-availability of title deeds over their small extents of land.”
He said the revenue authorities used to reject the claims of the poor purchasers on the ground that their names did not figure in the revenue records. Prof. V. Balakista Reddy of Nalsar University, said purchasers of lakhs of acres of patta lands through plain paper transactions are not recognised as legal owners. Among them, a majority is the poor and has less than five acres. If the titles are regularised it would give economic stability to the poor farmers, he said.
