22 Lakh Acres Gone Missing Under BRS Regime
Revanth Reddy and Srinivas Reddy had claimed that a forensic audit would expose how thousands of acres changed hands illegally.
Hyderabad: Lakhs of acres of government lands have allegedly mysteriously vanished from the Dharani portal during the BRS rule, particularly lands listed under Part-B (disputed lands), as well as forest, endowment, Wakf, and assigned lands, allotted to the poor.
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and revenue minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy had specifically pointed to large-scale irregularities in government lands in Siddipet and Siricilla constituencies -the strongholds of BRS top leaders T. Harish Rao and K.T. Rama Rao.
Revanth Reddy and Srinivas Reddy had claimed that a forensic audit would expose how thousands of acres changed hands illegally. However, even after 19 months in office, there has been no progress, leaving these allegations hanging without action.
According to the revenue department's data, records related to lakhs of acres of forest, endowment, Wakf and Bhoodan lands were either altered or removed from official registries between 2014 and 2023 during the BRS regime. The Congress government claims there is a significant mismatch between land records before 2014 and those updated post-2023, raising serious questions about record tampering.
Srinivas Reddy revealed that a comparative analysis of pre-2014 'prohibited land lists' and current data shows a systematic deletion of records for thousands of acres. He reiterated the Congress government's commitment to disclosing exact figures of land removed from official listings, which did not happen so far.
A forest land survey conducted between September 2017 and January 2018 found that, although Telangana was supposed to have 66.67 lakh acres of forest land, only 43.93 lakh acres were accounted for — suggesting 22.74 lakh acres had gone missing.
The forest department had raised this concern with the then Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and then Chief Secretaries SP Singh and SK Joshi. However, only 2.18 lakh acres were marked as "disputed" and excluded from issuance of land documents, leaving over 20 lakh acres unaccounted for.
Endowment lands have also shrunk drastically. Of the 84,195 acres owned by about 12,000 temples, nearly 25,000 acres are reportedly untraceable after land record updates. By the time the data was uploaded to Dharani, temple lands had shrunk to around 49,000 acres.
Wakf properties have seen a similar fate. Before the Dharani portal update, Telangana had around 74,000 acres of Wakf land, but only 45,564 acres remain on record today. An estimated 28,436 acres are believed to have been converted into private land through irregular entries in the land passbook system.
Assigned lands, which totalled 22.68 lakh acres, have also reportedly vanished from updated Dharani records. The total extent of patta (private) land jumped from 1.30 crore acres to 1.55 crore acres between 2014 and 2020 — an unexplained increase of 25 lakh acres. The government is still investigating whether this increase came at the cost of forest, endowment or Wakf lands.
The forensic audit promised by the Congress government was expected to unearth these alleged irregularities, but it remains only on paper even after 19 months.
