Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Wednesday decided to appoint a committee to go into the revamping of the contentious land record management system Dharani even as he decided to get a comprehensive survey of lands done in the state.
The committee will comprise ministers, officials and other stakeholders who will thoroughly study the procedures presently adopted and the changes that the Congress promised to bring in. As an immediate measure, grievance cells would be set up at mandal level to resolve the pending applications running into lakhs.
The Chief Minister expressed displeasure over 18 lakh farmers still not given pattadar passbooks and more than 23 lakh grievances were pending. He wanted details of expenditure of Rs 83 crore granted by the Centre for launching a comprehensive project that includes survey of lands, digitisation of records and bringing in the Title Guarantee Act.
The Chief Minister also asked the revenue officials to furnish all details about the tender process for selection of the agency to maintain Dharani, fund flow, third-party audit to find discrepancies in change of ownership and procedures followed in a foreign company gaining control over the project. He inquired about the location of the server, security audits, payment modules and asked the officials to come up with a detailed report.
Official sources said the Chief Minister questioned the legal sanctity to the Dharani Act and highlighted major lacunae in the Act which has no appellate provisions. To the utter shock of the participants in the meeting, the officials informed him about the previous government not framing rules, after adopting the Dharani Act. The framing of rules is mandatory after bringing in any legislation.
The Congress carried out a sustained campaign to replace Dharani with a better and fool-proof land record management system despite a counter campaign by former Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao that farmers would lose their lands and would not get financial assistance under Rythu Bandhu.
There were allegations that the ownership of thousands of acres was changed to benamis of powerful politicians in the previous regime using Dharani. There were also allegations that physical records pertaining to lands since Independence were inaccessible.
