Landowners fear that the TS government’s offer will be misused by land grabbers (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: The Telangana state government’s offer to legalise land registrations done on plain paper (sada bainama) prior to June 2, 2014 has opened a can of worms.

Complaints are pouring from all districts over the misuse of this scheme by land grabbers and tenant farmers who are applying for registration by creating fake land deals on plain paper without the knowledge of genuine owners. Applications are being accepted under the scheme from June 2 for a week.

Those who own agriculture lands in villages and have settled elsewhere, especially abroad, long ago, are being targeted. Due to the numerous complaints, the government has asked revenue officials to thoroughly verify the applications at field-level besides trying to contact the owners before registering such lands.

CCLA Raymond Peter issued instructions to all collectors, RDOs and MROs to be extra vigilant while processing these applications before recommending registration.

“We will put all these applications online so that anyone can verify whether they are genuine or not. In case of any fraud, they can lodge complaint online, which will be referred for inquiry. Only after thorough verification, the applications will be approved and lands will be registered. There is no need for anyone to worry about losing their lands,” Mr Peter said.

Such as been the huge response for this scheme that 56,100 applications have been already received since June 2. Officials expect the numbers to cross the one lakh mark till the June 10 deadline. A large number of applications were received from Khammam, Warangal and Karimnagar districts.

Traditionally, Telanganaites have been known to carrying out land transactions on plain paper rather than on stamp papers in rural areas. This is because of illiteracy or lack of awareness among the rural masses.

Also, many landowners have given their agriculture lands to tenant farmers for cultivation decades ago and have settled in cities or abroad. Their relatives or friends in villages are alerting them about the attempts being made to grab their lands under the new scheme.

Alerted by this, these landowners are now lodging complaints through e-mails to revenue departments. Such complaints have been received from USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UAE etc.