FILE L · 17 pages

Land & Revenue

Records, Bhu Bharati, mutations, disputes, acquisition.

• The Bhu Bharati Act 2025 in brief

  The Telangana Bhu Bharati (Record of Rights in Land) Act, 2025 — Act 1 of 2025 — replaced the Dharani Act of 2020. It restored enquiry before mutation (ss. 7–8), created a statutory appeal ladder (s. 15) and Land Tribunals (s. 14), brought back village accounts (s. 13) and a village officer cadre, opened routes to fix Dharani's legacy errors (ss. 4, 6), and gave every parcel a Bhudhaar ID (s. 9). Statewide from 2 June 2025 on the bhubharati.telangana.gov.in portal.

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• Reading the land records

  Each record answers one question: the sethwar fixes what a survey number originally was, the khasra pahani (1954–55) fixes who held it then, the tippan fixes its shape, the pahani says who holds and cultivates it this year, the 1B aggregates one person's holdings, the faisal patti settles the year's demand, and the pattadar passbook is the owner's title document. Title work means walking this chain from the sethwar forward — the current RoR entry is only a rebuttable presumption under Section 11.

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• Appeals, revision and corrections

  First appeals under Section 15: against Tahsildar/Sub-Registrar RoR orders to the RDO in 60 days; against RDO orders to the District Collector in 60 days. Second appeal in 30 days to the Collector or Land Tribunal — with the CCLA acting as deemed tribunal until tribunals are constituted (s. 14). Section 16 lets the CCLA revise fraudulent or illegal changes. RoR corrections are value-linked: RDO below ₹5 lakh, Collector above, and some categories Collector-only. The Section 4 rectification window reportedly closed 13 April 2026.

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• Sada bainama regularisation

  Section 6 of the Bhu Bharati Act lets small and marginal farmers who bought agricultural land on unregistered plain paper before 02-06-2014, and have held it 12+ years, get the sale regularised. The RDO verifies legality against ceiling, assignment and transfer-restriction laws, issues a validity certificate on payment of fee, and the buyer enters the RoR with a passbook. About 9.65 lakh applications from the 2020 Dharani window are being processed — no fresh window — after the High Court stay was vacated in 2026. Urban-area lands are excluded.

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• Part-B lands and record purification

  Part-B is Dharani's parking lot: roughly 18 lakh acres of disputed or unclear parcels kept out of the main RoR in 2020, whose owners lost access to transactions. Purification proceeds case-by-case: Revenue Sadassulu gathered ~8.58 lakh applications across 10,725 village hearings in 2025, and disposal runs through the portal's correction modules under the value-linked RDO/Collector jurisdiction — with notional-khata conversions and prohibited-list (POB/CARD) removals reserved to the Collector irrespective of value.

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• Kinds of government land

  Poramboke (common-purpose land), shikam (tank beds), abadi/gramakantam (village sites), banjar (assignable waste), assigned land, ceiling surplus, bhoodan, endowment and wakf land each carry a different legal character. The first question on any encroachment or assignment file is which kind the land is — that decides whether it can be assigned at all, who can act, and which special law applies. Classification comes from the sethwar and record chain, never from the portal entry alone.

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• Assigned lands: the POT Act 1977, Yadaiah, and the ownership question

  Assignment (lavani) gives government banjar free to the landless poor — on the permanent condition that it never be sold. The POT Act 1977 makes transfers of assigned land void: the buyer gets nothing however long the chain, the land can be resumed from the transferee, and restoration to the assignee or their heirs is the default — a doctrine the Supreme Court strictly reaffirmed in Yadaiah (2023). Telangana's own statutory change remains the 2018 amendment regularising pre-31-12-2017 purchases. The 20-year ownership conferral is ANDHRA PRADESH's Act 35 of 2023, not Telangana law — Telangana has only announced it will follow the AP model. As of August 2026 the prohibition still fully applies here.

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• Dharani to Bhu Bharati: the transition

  Bhu Bharati inherited Dharani's data as-is on 14 April 2025 — errors included. The live pains as of August 2026: migrated errors concentrating correction work at RDO/Collector level under the ₹5-lakh rule, a rectification window reported closed since 13 April 2026, 9.65 lakh sada bainama cases moving after the HC stay was vacated, the CCLA carrying second appeals as deemed tribunal, a GPO cadre only ~3,550 strong against 10,954 posts, and procedures that differ between the 5 Integrated Bhu Bharati pilot mandals and the rest of the state.

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• The re-survey and Bhudhaar

  A statewide digital re-survey (DGPS + QGIS) has begun in 2,240 villages with ~5,520 licensed surveyors (4–6 per mandal). Every parcel gets a Bhudhaar under Section 9 — a temporary number now, permanent only after re-survey — and survey maps are already mandatory at registration of agricultural land under Section 5. Until the re-survey completes, boundary-dispute work is transition work: the tippan and settlement records still decide the ground, and Bhudhaar/passbook grievances go to the RDO within 60 days.

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• Land acquisition: the 2013 Act in outline

  Land acquisition runs under the central RFCTLARR Act, 2013: Social Impact Assessment (s. 4), consent of 70% of affected families for PPP projects and 80% for private ones (s. 2(2)), preliminary notification (s. 11) and declaration (s. 19), an award within 12 months (ss. 23, 25), compensation at a multiplied market value plus 100% solatium (ss. 26–30), and rehabilitation & resettlement as a statutory entitlement (s. 31). In Telangana the acquisition workhorse is the RDO or a Special Deputy Collector (Land Acquisition). Check state rules, amendments and negotiated-purchase G.O.s on any live file.

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• FTL, buffer zones and HYDRAA

  FTL is a tank's maximum storage level; construction inside it is prohibited, and G.O.Ms.No. 168 (MA&UD, 07-04-2012) adds buffer zones — 30 m from FTL for lakes of 10 ha and above, 9 m for smaller tanks and shikam, 9 m for canals/nalas wider than 10 m, 2 m for smaller nalas. FTL is fixed by Irrigation identifying and Revenue verifying, through preliminary notification, objections and final notification — and most lakes are stuck at preliminary. Inside the ORR, enforcement belongs to HYDRAA (G.O.Ms.No. 99, MA&UD, 19-07-2024); outside, it stays with Irrigation and the district revenue machinery. The HC's repeated warning: no demolition without notice, hearing and a notified FTL.

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• The prohibited list: Section 22-A and getting off it

  The prohibited-properties list under Section 22-A of the Registration Act blocks registration of assigned, endowment, wakf, government and similar lands — but the 2017–18 records updation and the 2020 Dharani migration wrongly swept thousands of acres of genuine patta land into it, often blocking whole survey numbers for one government sub-division. The way out now runs through Bhu Bharati: a portal correction application, Tahsildar/RDO field enquiry, and deletion ordered by the District Collector — with higher-value corrections reserved to the Collector (reported threshold ₹5 lakh). The administrative correction window reportedly closed 13-04-2026; the writ of mandamus remains the backstop when revenue sits on a genuine case.

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• The Land Encroachment Act, 1905: evicting from government land

  The Telangana Land Encroachment Act, 1905 is the working machinery for removing occupations of government land. Section 2 declares public roads, waste, tanks and rivers government property; a s.7 show-cause notice must precede everything; s.6 eviction follows by a further notice and then physical removal. Appeals climb Tahsildar → RDO → Collector → CCLA. The controlling limit is Thummala Krishna Rao (SC 1982): the summary power is only for clear encroachments — a bona fide title dispute must go to civil court.

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• Protected tenants and Section 38-E: the 1950 Act that still decides title

  The A.P. (Telangana Area) Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1950 gave protected tenants near-ownership security, and Section 38-E transferred ownership of their lands to them from notified dates (1.1.1973 for the relevant districts). The 38-E certificate is conclusive evidence of ownership; the Supreme Court held in 2021 that later purchasers from the old landholder got nothing. A 1950s protected-tenant entry can defeat an entire modern sale-deed chain — due diligence means pulling pre-1971 pahanis and the protected-tenants register, because Dharani and Bhu Bharati carry no live protected-tenant column.

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• Inams and the ORC: the 1955 Abolition Act's unfinished business

  The Telangana (Abolition of Inams) Act, 1955 vested all inam land in Government from 20 July 1955, subject to re-grant of occupancy rights through an Occupancy Rights Certificate (ORC). The RDO is the ORC authority (with appeal to the District Collector), confirmed by the Telangana High Court in 2024 even for service inams. The 1975 Rules fixed 1 November 1973 as the possession cut-off. Lakhs of parcels never got ORCs — sales without one are void against Government, inam survey numbers sit in 22-A prohibited lists, and ORC files remain a standing part of the RDO's quasi-judicial docket.

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• The Land Grabbing Act, 1982: dead machinery, live complaints

  The AP Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 1982 created Special Courts with civil-plus-criminal jurisdiction and a reversed burden of proof. In Telangana the machinery is gone: G.O.Ms.No.113, Revenue, dt. 01-06-2016 abolished the Special Court w.e.f. 1 June 2016, transferring pending cases to the Chief Judge, City Civil Court, Hyderabad and Principal District Judges, and pending appeals to the High Court. A 'land grabbing' complaint today has no special forum — triage it into the 1905 Act, POT Act, endowments/wakf machinery, civil suit, or police complaint as the facts demand.

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• Urban Land Ceiling: repealed in 2008, still haunting title

  The Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act, 1976 was repealed by the central Repeal Act of 1999, which united AP adopted w.e.f. 27-03-2008 — binding both successor states. The repeal saves only cases where the State had actually taken possession of vested surplus land before that date. The Supreme Court (2025 INSC 274) held that mere vesting under s.10(3) gives the State no de facto possession absent voluntary surrender or actual dispossession. In Hyderabad, 1970s–80s surplus declarations still surface in title searches and 22-A lists; the decisive question on every ULC flag is: was possession actually taken before 27-03-2008?

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