Hyderabad: Among other cases of land grab, the Tellapur, Ameenpur, Kollur and Patancheru land grabbing is the biggest —involving 1,289 acres of valuable land. Of the total, 453 acres is government assigned land and 836 acres patta land.
The land was assigned to landless poor and victims of ‘political persecution’. The Sinha committee said that Industrial Employees Cooperative House Building Society (IECHBS) of Bandlaguda prepared a house site layout on government assigned lands and patta lands and sold to various individuals described as members of the society. This took place over a period stretching as far back as 1980s and 1990s.
The committee said that, it noted that the president of the cooperative society V. Narayana Rao never purchased government land assigned to landless poor.
After preparing unauthorised layouts covering all the villages, sale of such house site plots was conducted by the IECHBS society by misleading the buyers with illegal orders passed by DRO (Medak) in 1987, through which the land use was changed from agricultural to non-agricultural use.
Also, buyers were presented with illegal approval of layouts by the sarpanch (Tellapur) granted in 1977. The probe panel also noted that the layout, based on which plots were sold, was never approved by any competent authority. Any prospective buyer of a house site would have readily believed that the land was clear in status as there was an order of DRO (Medak) converting the land for non-agricultural use. It is a different thing that after most of the housing plots were sold, the order of DRO in 1987 was found to be illegal and cancelled by the Joint Collector in 1986, only with regard to government assigned lands.
The Sinha committee said the DRO of Medak district, who while working right under the nose of collector, issued several irregular orders permitting use for non-agricultural purposes the same land which had been resumed and the matter was pending before the High Court. The committee said that these orders had in fact been the basis of all subsequent troubles.
