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State to lose land worth Rs 15,000 cr
Posted by Srini Uppala | January 8, 2008 | 533 views
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Loading ...Several influential persons, including Congress and Telugu Desam leaders, may get to keep lands worth Rs 15,000 crore on the city outskirts because of the official delay in declaring them surplus under the Urban Land Ceiling Act.
The ULC special officer and revenue authorities have been pushing files back and forth without taking any concrete steps to determine the surplus lands in the concerned area near Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Kukatpally.
If officials continue to drag their feet, the government will lose all stakes in the lands in survey numbers 145, 163 and 172 in Hydernagar and 77, 78, 79 and 80 in Hafeezpet once ULC Act is repealed. Sources said that the big shots possessing the land wanted exactly this to happen and were pulling strings to keep officials on a go-slow mode.
Former Telugu Desam MP, Mr Bhooma Nagi Reddy, owns part of the land, and some Congress and TD leaders have purchased other plots in benami deals.
Goldstone Technologies, a top company, has already mooted a proposal through the Chief Minister’s Office to build a township in one of the plots. ULC authorities and Ranga Reddy district revenue officials are blaming each other for the delay. The major point of contention is who should identify the owners of land in 1976 when the Act came into force.
A senior revenue official said rules specified that people who were in possession of land in 1976 should file a declaration of surplus under section 6. “If they fail to turn up, the ULC can suo moto initiate the process by issuing notices to the land owners,” he said.
Identifying original land owners is crucial because the extent of the retainable land and surplus can only be determined on the basis of the number of individuals of a family who turned majors at the time the Act came into force. “The existing owners are worried that the retainable land under ULC Act will not be more than 100 acres if that happens,” said the official. “The rest will become surplus.”
Sources said former ULC special officer, Mr Bhanumurthy, wrote to Ranga Reddy district officials asking them to identify owners based on the revenue records. “We can issue notices only when the ownership is established,” Mr Bhanumurthy told this correspondent. However, revenue officials said it was the ULC special officer’s headache and not theirs. “As per revenue records, the lands were notified as government owned in 1976 and were declared private lands only in 2006,” said Ranga Reddy district joint collector, Mr V. Seshadri.
When the district administration clarified the point to the ULC special officer, he returned the file seeking the same details again. The file was then sent back with the same explanation. “This is nothing but a delaying tactic,” said CPI state secretary, Mr K. Narayana, who recently demanded that the government should distribute these lands to the poor. “The drama has been going on for the last few years.”
SOURCES:
Deccan Chronicle
Topics: Public Concerns, Property Matters, Govt Failures, Real Estate |
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