CM Releases Rs 17 Crores For Land Records Updation

The Telangana government today released Rs 17 crores for the cleansing and simplification of land records and taking them online.

According to information, the state government issued orders to this extent and released the funds to all the districts except Hyderabad.

Rs 50 lakh have been sanctioned by the government for each of the 30 districts. The government also released Rs 1 crore to the Principal Secretary (Revenue) and Rs 1 crore to the Mission Director for the modernization of land records.

The funds are part of the exercise being initiated upon Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's order for a three-month comprehensive land survey to be taken up. The survey is meant to cleanse, rectify and simplify land records across the state to avoid legal issues and ensure online services to the farmers and people relevant to their lands.

Based on the land survey reports, the state government will take a decision to pay Rs 8,000 per acre for two seasons to the farmers from next May towards crop investment to help rid them of their loan burden.

The CM asked the District Collectors, Joint Collectors, Revenue Divisional Officers and Mandal Revenue Officers to treat the program as a top priority. In a review meeting with the Collectors, Joint Collectors and RDOs on the exercise, he said, "We have decided to transfer Rs 8,000 per acre for two crops per year into the bank accounts of farmers as an input finance assistance. However, we discovered that the reports by the agriculture department and the revenue department about the lands of the farmers did not match. This problem is due to non-maintenance of land records properly. Now we have to find out the actual details of who owns how much land. There should be clarity on the land ownership rights."

"The state government has taken several lakh acres of agriculture land from the farmers for irrigation projects, laying of railway lines, schools, hospitals and such public utility activities, but these have not been recorded. The records show that these lands are still in the hands of the farmers. And this is leading to several problems. There is a need to have clarity on the land ownership. In every village there are 80 to 95 lands which have no dispute or litigation. Get clarity on these lands first with the help of people and farmers in the village.

"In the second phase, identify the lands that are under litigation. We will get clarity on the rights to these lands after the verdicts by the courts. With the village as a unit, identify and record the government lands, assigned lands, Wakf lands, endowment lands, lands acquired by the government and other categories of land. The entire responsibility for selecting the team that works in the village as part of the program should be with the District Collector concerned. If need be, appoint some persons on a temporary basis. We are assigning Rs 50 lakhs per Collector for the land records rectification, cleansing and updation program," the CM added.