The Hindu: Hyderabad: Tuesday, May 30, 2017.
The existing
loopholes in the system make it easy for government lands to be registered and
to even get away with it if caught, according to revenue officials and
activists fighting encroachments. Though the ₹500 crore scam in Miyapur area
came to light recently, there are many land tracts in Western parts of the
city, including Kukatpally, Hafeezpet, Madhapur, Kondapur and Gachibowli which
are the properties of the State only on paper but in possession of individuals
in realty.
Gazette
notification
According to
the complainant and activist, Rajkumar Thakur, who repeatedly approached the
Lok Ayukta, police and the revenue regarding encroachments in Miyapur area said
that the present rules make it easy for sub-registrar to register even
government lands.
“I had filed
an RTI with a Sub-registrar office regarding a memo issued by a local Mandal
Revenue Officer. I got an answer from the Sub-registrar that he does not have
to obey what the revenue department says and he can go ahead with the
registration of any land. According to the registration department officers,
unless there is a gazette which notifies government lands, they cannot be
blamed for faulty registrations. We suspect that in many cases the sub-registrars
feign ignorance about such gazettes to go ahead with their illegal activities.”
He said
‘registration from anywhere’ initiative was also aiding the illegal
registrations as the encroachers have a choice to execute their plans by
colluding with any corrupt sub-registrar elsewhere even though the land is
located in a different zone. An officer of the stamps and registrations
department says that they are not entirely to blame for situation. “The biggest
problem we face on a daily basis is because of the lethargic attitude of the
revenue department. They do not promptly send us boundaries of the government
lands.
All we get
are the survey numbers but to what extent is never clear,” said a sub-registrar
posted in Rangareddy district. “Sometimes a few private parties approach us
saying that a part of the land in a particular a particular survey number
belongs to them and the rest to the government. In the absence of details
regarding the boundaries, there have been registrations in the past where even
some area of the government land was registered on the name of the adjacent
private land owner.”