95% land subject to legal dispute for lack of owners

About 95 per cent of land in the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority’s jurisdiction does not have any owner according to the draft Land Titling Act.

Land ownership in India is established largely through a sale deed recording the transfer of property, but there is no government guaranteed title, and the onus is on the buyer to check the past ownership of the land and ensure it is free of encumbrances. Land ownership is therefore presumptive, and subject to challenge.

Land-related disputes account for about 80 per cent of all civil litigation in India, and as much as 95 per cent of all land parcels are subject to legal dispute. In order to check this practice, the HMDA and Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation have decided to conduct a comprehensive survey and adopt the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) in the Greater Hyderabad region.

According to highly-placed sources in the HMDA, Commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy, during a meeting, asked town planning officials to conduct a comprehensive study of land ownership, digitise the records and guarantee ownership to the rightful land owner. He told the officials to adopt DILRMP in the HMDA limits and tour Mysore which has already implemented it. Sources said that DILRMP will enable the second phase of land purification in urban areas.

A senior HMDA official said DILRMP will develop a modern, comprehensive and transparent land records management system in urban areas. It will accord a unique identity to every property and enable a common base for all land transactions, including the maintenance and updating of textual records, maps and survey.