TS set to regularise encroached lands

Property on lakes, nalas, parks to be legalised

Lands belonging to lakes, nalas, parks, roads, among others that were encroached in the city are all set to be regularised as part of the recent Land Regularisation Scheme announced by the Telangana government.

The preliminary scrutiny of applications found over 40,000 such applications, which were rejected by the officials as per norms. However, with the ensuing GHMC elections, the government has asked revenue officials to adopt a “liberal approach” on these applications and allow regularisation.

The government plans to even change the “classification of lands” to enable regularisation of these lands. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has decided to convene an allparty meeting soon after the conclusion of the ongoing Budget Session of the Legislature to discuss changing “classification of lands” to regularise such lands measuring up to 125 square yards.

Mr Rao held a meeting with collectors of Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts last week and issued instructions to explore possibilities of exploring regularisation of these objectionable applications.

“As many as 43,512 LRS applications that were placed under ‘objectionable category’ during the preliminary scrutiny, will now be considered for regularisation,” said a senior official of the revenue department.

A total of 3,55,118 applications were received in Hyderabad and RR dis- tricts under GO 58, which is meant for regularisation of lands for the poor free of cost up to 125 sq. yards. Of them, 64,246 applications came from Hyderabad and 1,52,249 applications from Ranga Reddy.

Officials have already completed scrutiny of 1.70 lakh applications and found that about 43,000 applications cannot be considered since they belong to lakes, roads and parks among others according to revenue records.

Over 1,822 applications came for regularisation of encroached lands belonging to various departments of the Central government. This was followed by Cantonment lands (853), Wakf (831), defence (796), state housing department (795), endowments (542), electricity (312), roads and buildings (262), nalas (244) and assigned lands (219).

There was also rampant encroachment of shikham lands (lands lying on margins of water bodies), for which 1,357 applications from Hyderabad revenue district and 3,965 from Secunderabad came for regularisation. Besides, 791 applications were submitted to regularise lands belonging to graveyards and 4,400 applications for regularisation of Begumpet airport lands.

The Telangana state government has to seek the permission of the Centre for regularisation of Cantonment and defence lands and offer the same extent of land to the Centre in other areas.