The orders came abruptly. On the morning of September 7, the Telangana government told revenue officers of all villages to submit every pap...
The orders came abruptly. On the morning of September 7, the Telangana government told revenue officers of all villages to submit every paper land record in their possession to the district collector by 3.30 pm that day. There would be no registration of land records or any change in them until further notice. Then on September 11, the Telangana government introduced a bill to abolish the post of village revenue officer who keeps a copy of all the village level land records in the state.
Two weeks later, the state ordered all municipal, district and panchayat officers to finish registering all non-agricultural property including flats, plots and houses in the state’s online land records portal called Dharani. The government officers were given time till October 20 to upload all the documents for the entire state.
Since September, Telangana has made sweeping changes to how it maintains its land records. It has passed four new land laws without any debate in the state assembly. These changes are the culmination of a longer, deeper shift towards digitising land records, which the state began in 2017. That was followed by the launch of Dharani where people could access land records.
Telangana and the central government’s planning...
