HYDERABAD: Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Saturday directed revenue department officials to immediately clear 2.45 lakh pending applications related to Dharani portal, the integrated land records management system. He also directed the officials to conduct a comprehensive inquiry into the private agency that is currently maintaining the portal.
The chief minister asked the revenue department to design policies and issue orders based on the recommendations of the expert committee on Dharani, which was formed to look into the reforms to make the portal foolproof. He also directed the officials concerned to make necessary arrangements in each tahsildar office to resolve the issues.
The CM held a review meeting on the issues related to Dharani with Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy, expert committee members, chief secretary Santhi Kumari, principal secretary to revenue department Naveen Mittal and others on Saturday.
The expert committee on Dharani comprising its chairperson M Kodanda Reddy, retired IAS officer Raymond Peter, advocate Sunil, retired special grade collector B Madhusudhan and project director, CCLA, V Lachi Reddy informed the chief minister that there were flaws in Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Pass Books Act, 2020.
Expressing serious concerns over foreign companies maintaining sensitive data such as Aadhaar, bank accounts, and land records pertaining to lakhs of farmers, Revanth questioned the authorities as to why land records were handed over to a private agency. He expressed apprehension over the security of land records.
The authorities informed him that the then government had handed over the Dharani portal to IL&FS based on technical and financial bidding in 2018. They further said that a majority of the stake in IL&FS was taken over by TerraCIS Technologies Ltd (TTL), and eventually, the IL&FS Group sold its stake in TTL to Falcon SG Holdings of the Philippines.
In response, the chief minister questioned how the State government could allow it when the bidding company changed its name. He questioned the authorities whether there were any rules framed to hand over land records to a foreign company. He said that it was shocking to learn that IL&FS which bagged the bid for Rs 116 crore sold its shares for Rs 1,200 crore. He wanted to know whether private companies were tampering with land records. He also reprimanded the authorities for not having control of land administration stating that he had received complaints about land registrations taking place even in the middle of night.
Responding to the suggestion made by the expert committee on Dharani, he said that he would look into the aspect of amending or enacting a new legislation for land administration based on the committee’s report. The chief minister advised the committee to study further deeply into the flaws in Dharani and to come up with solutions.Revanth Reddy also asked the committee to ensure that the reforms in land administration should not lead to new problems.
The committee said that the previous government’s rush to complete land survey in just three months created new land issues. It opined that the issues proliferated as the previous government had taken up the land administration on the basis of a faulty land survey. It brought to the CM’s notice that farmers were put to trouble as they were forced to approach the district collector even for rectification of typographical errors.
The committee also noted that although there were 35 modules made available for corrections in the Dharani portal, the farmers faced problems due to lack of awareness. It further said that lakhs of applications were rejected and the application fee of Rs 1,000 proved a burden on the farmers.
It informed the CM that due to lack of coordination between the Stamps and Registrations and Revenue departments, transactions in prohibited lands were taking place without any hindrance and crores of rupees of public money were misused as the Rythu Bandhu scheme was implemented on the database of Dharani portal.