Hyderabad: The Telangana government is conducting a special survey of defence lands in Hyderabad and surrounding districts.
There is a tussle between the defence ministry and state government over the ownership of lands at various locations with each claiming to be the owner, and the latest survey plans to resolve these issues.
The state government also wants to identify unused defence lands and use them for civilian purposes by taking special permission from the Centre.
With most of the defence lands located only in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts, special instructions have been issued to the collectors to take up the survey accurately and on a war-footing.
Following this, the collectors have issued specific directions to tehsildars of all the mandals in these two districts to take up the survey on a ‘priority basis’ and submit a report to the state government within two weeks.
According to records available with the revenue department, the defence ministry owns 7,000 acres in both these districts. Of them, Rajendranagar, Malkajgiri, Balanagar and Ibrahimpatnam mandals in RR district alone have 3,000 acres.
The remaining 4,000 acres are spread over Bandlaguda, Trimulgherry, Golconda, Shaikpet, Marredpally and Asifnagar mandals. However, it came to the notice of the government that a large chunk of these lands are lying unused for decades.
The TS government, which is desperate to find lands in the city to build 2BHK houses for the poor with an aim of making Hyderabad slum free by 2019, is looking at all the available options to mobilise lands. The government is keen that these houses should be built in the core areas of the city and not on the city outskirts.
For this, the government considered taking seven acres of Osmania University lands in Tarnaka, but kept the proposal on hold after it triggered sharp protests from students.
In the meantime, the state government is looking at unused defence lands for the purpose. But it remains to be seen whether the tighter norms of the defence ministry would allow the TS government to takeover these lands that were allotted decades ago and now command huge property value.
