Dharani website for a solution of land disputes in Telangana state

Dharani, the much-awaited website of the Telangana Revenue department,  The website, which will be live now, will put in place a new system for land registration across the State. the new system of registration will mitigate the risk of corruption, providing a more transparent system that ensures that all land sales or purchases are recorded in the Pattadar passbook.

For decades together, a large number of disputes and disparities existed in villages due to lack of proper records pertaining to lands and related issues.

State govt. decided to launch the much-awaited land registration system and Dharani, a website meant to maintain land records, only after complete purification of the records and updating the data bank of landowners. It felt that though the purification of land records was completed, these have to be updated immediately and errors should be rectified.

State govt. felt that  for decades together, a large number of disputes and disparities existed in villages due to lack of proper records pertaining to lands and related issues. “The earlier governments failed to find solutions to these problems, including those involving government lands and disputes between revenue and forest departments. To put an end to this, the government initiated and completed cleansing, rectifying and updating land records,”.

It seems to be no other State in India dared to take up land records purification as it was a difficult task.In accordance with the cleansing of land records, farmers were provided with Rythu Bandhu cheques and pattadar passbooks. “But there are a few gaps that need to be filled. The programme needs to be accomplished with 100 per cent success,” Govt. takes consent by  asking members of Rythu Samanvaya Samithis (Farmers Coordination Committees), Ministers and MLAs to participate in the programme to ensure its completion.

The farmers were living on agriculture with meagre income from their lands. “Majority of farmers in the State are small and marginal farmers with around 18 lakh farmers having less than one acre land holding. In case of death of a farmer, his/her family undergoes a lot of turmoil. Hence, the State government decided to launch an insurance scheme where Rs 5 lakh will be paid to the bereaved family,”

The life insurance will be provided through Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) . While the premium amount will be paid by government on behalf of the farmers, every farmer will be given the insurance documents. “From application to claim of insurance, the whole process will be a simplified one. Insurance money will be transferred to the nominee automatically on the death of a farmer,”

Over 3 lakh corrected passbooks under print for distribution

Dharani website, which is a gateway to all the updated and purified agricultural land revenue records in the State.

“Dharani will account for each and every action of an individual and his trail will be found if any change is made in a particular Khata (account) number. The portal will record the history of every khata number - whether any parcel of the land has been sold, to whom it is sold and the latest extent of the land in the account,” senior Revenue Department officials said. The hall mark of Dharani is accountability and for that checks and balances have to be inbuilt into the software system for fixing accountability. It will have central storage which can not be obliterated.

Glitches corrected

Dharani cannot be a simple system where everyone can access and manipulate without much difficulty. The system was being tested to correct the glitches as part of the trial run.

It was significant that 93% of land holdings were clean and 57 lakh pattadar passbooks were updated. That way the department’s major work was done and Rythu Bandhu scheme was implemented successfully and cheques were distributed. Only 7% of land holdings were disputed and they are being addressed under Part-B of the survey.

Of the 57 pattadar passbooks printed, errors were found in about 10 to 12% of passbooks due to wrong entry of data like name, the extent of land, survey number etc.

Of 57 lakh pattadar passbooks, the problem was reduced to only 5% of them. About three lakh corrected data of pattadar passbooks was uploaded into Dharani and three lakh more passbooks are under print in Manipal and Madras, and every day printed passbooks are being sent for distribution. The process of distribution of corrected passbooks will also be completed in 15 days.