The Telangana High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the State government to file detailed counters within four weeks in response to a PIL which raised several issues relating to Dharani website. The PIL has been filed by advocate Rapolu Bhaskar.
A division bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice Ujjal Bhyuan and Justice CV Bhaskar Reddy ordered the issue of notices to the Chief Secretary, Principal Secretaries of Revenue and Forest Department, Chief Commissioner of Land Administration (CCLA), District Collector, Mahabubabad, and three other revenue authorities.
The petitioner sought the authorities concerned to correct the entries of patta lands of innocent farmers in Narayanapuram village, Kesamudhra mandal, Mahabubabad district which were enrolled in the name of the Forest Department. He argued that as a result of the introduction of the Dharani website and subsequent portal in Telangana, the revenue authorities had incorrectly uploaded the eight lakh acres of patta land parcels in the portal.
He said that this had led to lakhs of farmers becoming helpless in conducting transactions on their occupied lands. When the aggrieved farmers approached the revenue authorities by filing online applications, the officials were demanding lakhs of rupees from each farmer for making corrections and issuing e-passbooks.
The revenue authorities, in collusion with public representatives such as MLAs, MPs and real estate developers, were fraudulently converting such lands into plots under the guise of prohibited lands, Rapolu Bhaskar said.
The petitioner also claimed that lands up to 3,84,000 acres were uploaded as forest lands on the Dharani portal with this malafide intent and that revenue authorities had illegally collected crores in stamp duty to redress farmers’ grievances for corrections of entries in the Dharani portal. Taking advantage of this, revenue officials had in some cases illegally reversed the lands to the first original pattedar and sold those lands to third parties, leaving farmers landless, forcing them to starve, thereby violating Human Rights and the Right to Property under Article 300-A of the Indian Constitution, the advocate argued.