Registration of all waqf, endowment land banned in Telangana

HYDERABAD: In a far-reaching decision which will have repercussions in the way government land will be dealt with, the government has banned registrations of waqf and endowments land in the state till a comprehensive land survey is taken up. The ban comes into effect from Saturday.
Making an announcement in this regard in the legislative assembly on Friday, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said the ban was imposed under section 22 of the Indian Registration Act. He said there would be an auto-lock in the land web portal to prevent any transactions or malpractices.
Asserting that his government was committed to protecting the waqf and endowments land, the CM said 55,000 acres of the total 77,000 acres of waqf land had been encroached upon in 50 years (between 1963 and 2013) before Telangana was formed.
CM: 2,000 cases over waqf land pending
Over 2,000 cases pertaining to 6,000 acres of waqf land are pending in courts. Similarly, 87,000 acres of endowments land is under the clutches of land grabbers,” the CM said during a discussion on the new Revenue Act. It may be recalled TOI had reported in these columns that as many as 57,000 acres were encroached upon in all the 10 districts of the state.
KCR assured the members that his government would also come up with GOs for regularisation of encroached government land soon. The scheme was implemented earlier mainly to regularise government land encroachments — free for the poor — up to 100 square yards (GO No.
58) and on payment of regularisation fee for above 100 square yards (GO No. 59) where structures had already come up. He said the scheme would also be applicable to the poor who have been living in the slums (government land) and acquired properties on notarised documents.
He said a decision on transferring land or mutation through ‘sada bainama’ (sale transaction on ordinary papers) scheme is under active consideration since several MLAs have sought this facility. When the sada bainama scheme was implemented in 2017, the government had received over 11 lakh applications. “Nearly 6.80 lakh acres of land transactions were cleared without collecting any fee from the farmers,” KCR recalled.
Turning his focus to podu land (cultivation by farmers on forest land), the CM said this issue had been hanging fire and needs to be resolved. The government would hold a meeting in all the tribal areas and work out a lasting solution, he said.
Claiming that right of first refusal does not mean a ownership title or patta for the cultivators, he said ROFR details would be incorporated in Dharani website and benefits like Rythu Bandhu on a par with other farmers would be extended.