Hyderabad: Telangana Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy on Saturday, September 13, said that the state government has initiated corrective measures on a war footing to address the concerns of people whose lands had been included in a prohibitive list due to administrative errors.
The inclusion of lands in the prohibitive list under Section 22A has been a major issue in the state as the owners could not carry out registrations.
Reddy, who spoke for several hours in the Legislative Assembly during a short discussion on “Issues related to Section 22A of Registration Act,” hit out at opposition BRS and BJP leaders for their criticism against him over the issue.
Observing that the Section 22A issue began during undivided Andhra Pradesh, he said the problem would not have cropped up now had the previous BRS government addressed the issue when it was in power for 10 years.
Taking exception to comments of opposition leaders that lakhs of acres of lands have been included under Section 22 A during the present Congress regime, he said the number of acres in the list has actually come down now.
While 1,02,52,690 acres was under Section 22A when the Congress government assumed office on December 7, 2023, the number declined to 1,02,05,250 acres as on August 31. This is a decline of 47,440 acres, he said.
The state government has initiated corrective measures soon after the problem came to the fore recently, he said.
The number of complaints to the call centre set up by the government on August 18 has also been on the wane, he said.
While 117 calls were received on August 18, the highest number of 317 calls were made on August 24. The number of calls on September 7 was 56, Reddy said.
He alleged large-scale irregularities in land transactions through the ‘Dharani’ digital land records management system introduced during the previous BRS regime.
However, BRS MLA T Harish Rao denied the allegations.
Meanwhile, alleging that the irregularities over lands continued in the present Congress government similar to the previous BRS regime, BJP floor leader A Maheshwar Reddy demanded that a probe by a High Court sitting judge be ordered into the land issues and also on “doubtful transactions” during the BRS and Congress regimes.
The debate remained inconclusive and the panel speaker adjourned the House to September 16.
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