Podu Rights Given for Revenue Land, Standing Forest Areas Too

Hyderabad: The granting of podu rights in forest land to applicants, especially the second phase during 2023, is raising many uncomfortable questions, with officials, under directions to provide detailed information to the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court on the podu patta exercise in Telangana, discovering many irregularities in how and where such rights were granted.

Among these irregularities and violations of norms in granting podu rights are titles issued in areas where standing forest exists, pattas issued to two or more families for the same land, to non-tribals, and even to government employees, and how pattas were issued even during the 2008 exercise to minors who were ineligible for these rights.

While such violations are evident, an additional dimension that has emerged is that multiple beneficiaries from the same family are receiving Rythu Bharosa funds for the same patch of land. Also, where pattas were issued to different families for the same land, the person cultivating the land has been receiving this benefit, as well as those not cultivating the land and pocketing the financial aid provided by the state under the Rythu Bharosa scheme.

“There was tremendous pressure to ‘meet targets’ for issuing podu pattas in 2023, special officers were appointed for each district who pushed forest officials not to raise any objections and prevent any applicant from getting the rights,” a source familiar with the latest findings told Deccan Chronicle.

The laws are clear that podu rights can be given to those whose sustenance exists only on using that land for their livelihood, but there are a large number of government employees, who receive a salary from the state and for whom podu is not the only form of sustenance, have also received pattas in 2023, sources said.

Official documents show that these violations occurred across the districts, and pattas were granted despite resistance from the forest department and the tribal welfare department, the nodal agency for the exercise, continues to refuse to release proceedings of the village and district level committees that approved the pattas in the first place.

Making matters even more complex is the emergence of the fact that the pattas, issued under the provisions of the Recognition of Forest Rights (RoFR) Act, a significant number issued in 2023, fell outside reserve forests and were on revenue land, raising serious questions about how forest rights pattas were issued on revenue lands. Complicating this further is the fact that such podu on revenue land beneficiaries are receiving Rythu Bharosa assistance even when the pattas themselves are infructuous as podu rights can only be given on forest lands.