Land Deals Halted in Andhra Amid Tampering Allegations

The Andhra Pradesh state government is for all practical purposes, clueless on how to resolve the contentious issue of free-hold lands. The registration of an estimated 20 lakh acres of assigned land has been suspended amidst the suspicion of tampered land records. Although, the state government held revenue meetings at village level to scrutinize land ownership documents, they haven't achieved any results with the free-hold lands issue in the last 12 months.  

Several lakhs of farmers in Andhra Pradesh have not been able to sell their land because the government has been delaying their decision to lift the prohibition on the registration of lands on the prohibition list.

Andhra Pradesh freezes registration of 20 lakh acres over tampered records.

Farmers face land sale delays as govt extends prohibition list review.

Calls grow for all-party policy on assigned land and 22-A disputes.

The government went as far as to appoint a group of ministers (GoM) to investigate this further since senior officials were unable to address this issue. Not surprisingly, the GoM was unable to move the matter any further notwithstanding the many meetings the group had. 

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Many farmers, and granted eligible assignees, thought the government would lift the freezes on the orders, at least to an extent, where the orders were outside the deception category. To the original assignee's dismay, the government merely extended the bans by three months in the guise of further verification of the records.

"We are hopeful of finding a solution by October. It is taking time as the govt wanted to prevent irregularities in transfer of assigned lands to the influential people. We wanted to protect the rights of the genuine landlords as well as the govt property," said revenue minister Anagani Satya Prasad.

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"The govt looks keen to hand over the lands of the poor to landlords and corporates with such delay tactics. We demand that an all-party meeting be held immediately to formulate a comprehensive policy on the land issue," CPM State Secretary V Srinivasa Rao.

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He pointed out that successive governments have said that about 32 lakh acres of surplus land was distributed to the poor since 1970. But, previous government said that more than 15 lakh acres were encroached upon by the influential people. "Before elections, Naidu promised to take back the assigned lands from the ineligible people and give it to the genuine persons. Not even an acre was distributed, besides resolving the existing 22-A issue," Srinivasa Rao said.