Hyderabad: Land records in the state are based on the surveys done by the Nizam government in the 1930s. Since then, a large number of land disputes have cropped up.
Erroneous records give scope for land encroachments, disputes and clashes between family members and groups. Sometimes it even poses law and order problems with the involvement of the land mafia.
A staggering 42 lakh errors were found in land records when the government conducted a special drive for six months from October 2015. The mismatch was revealed when revenue officials verfied manual land records with computerised land records in five categories — typographical, survey numbers, extent of land, registered in great grandparents’ name and wrong land mutation.
It has become easy for land grabbers to encroach on land in the absence of updated records. They lure revenue officials with bribes to register such land parcels in their name.
Some retired revenue officials, right from the village-to-state-level, who are conversant with the shortcomings in the data, help land grabbers to identify vulnerable pieces of land and get them registered in their names or those of their associates.
Owners are forced to ‘settle’ the issue with land grabbers by accepting whatever amount is offered by them.
The recent Miyapur land scam wherein hundreds of acres of government land was registered in favour of private firms/ individuals has alerted the state government to take concrete measures to putting an end to this menace.
