Dharani to Bhu Bharati: the transition

The law changed on paper in January 2025 and on the ground through that year: the portal on 14 April 2025, statewide operation from 2 June 2025. But the transition is not finished — a probationer in 2026 works inside it, and the pains below are the actual texture of the job. This page is the situational map: what carried over, what changed, what is still moving, and where the differences bite on a working day.

What Dharani was, briefly

Dharani (2020–2025) integrated registration and mutation into one portal-driven act — genuinely fast for clean registered sales — but removed everything around it: no field enquiry before record changes, no appeal short of the civil court or High Court, no village-level records or functionaries (the VRO system was abolished alongside it), and no correction machinery for its own errors. Its migration also created the Part-B parking lot: roughly 18 lakh acres of doubtful entries frozen out of transactions. Dharani’s 36 fragmented modules handled specific transaction types; anything that did not fit a module simply had no path.

Bhu Bharati (Act 1 of 2025) kept the good part — Section 5 auto-mutation at registration, survey map now mandatory — and rebuilt the rest: enquiry (ss. 7–8), appeals (s. 15), revision (s. 16), tribunals (s. 14), corrections (the Rules’ Modification Request machinery), village accounts (s. 13), the GPO cadre, Bhudhaar (s. 9), and sada bainama regularisation (s. 6).

The data came across as-is

Dharani’s records were migrated wholesale on 14 April 2025, errors included: wrong survey numbers, patta lands tagged “prohibited”, missing or incorrect extents, and the entire Part-B mass. Bhu Bharati changed the machinery for fixing errors; it did not fix them. The High Court has repeatedly intervened in individual cases. Practical consequence: every entry you rely on is only as good as its Dharani ancestor, and Section 11’s presumption of correctness attaches to data nobody re-verified at migration. For anything contested, walk the manual chain — sethwar, khasra pahani, pahani run.

The correction workload, and where it sits

Because the Rules make correction jurisdiction value-linked — RDO below ₹5 lakh, District Collector above, with notional-khata conversions, nature-of-property changes, prohibited-list removals and NALA reversions reserved to the Collector — the backlog concentrates precisely at the desks Deputy Collectors hold. Revenue Sadassulu front-loaded the intake: 10,725 village hearings across 593 mandals, gathering about 8.58 lakh applications in 2025 (some reports say 10 lakh with complaints), with a claimed >60% resolution excluding sada bainama cases. Disposal of the remainder is the office’s grind now.

A second pressure point: the Section 4 rectification window, widely reported as one year from commencement — closed 13 April 2026. Whether it was extended by later notification is unverified; expect parties who missed it, expect the resulting tribunal and civil litigation, and verify current instructions before rejecting late applications.

The other live workstreams, as of August 2026

• Sada bainama disposal is running: the HC stay was vacated in 2026 and ~9.65 lakh applications from the 2020 window are moving through RDOs, with political attention on the numbers. No fresh window.
• Land Tribunals exist in the Act (Section 14) but, per reporting, the CCLA still functions as deemed tribunal — second-appeal pendency accumulates there. Verify before telling a party where their second appeal lies.
• Re-survey has begun in 2,240 villages with ~5,520 licensed surveyors; permanent Bhudhaar numbers and map-backed passbooks wait on it. Boundary work rises during the overlap of old and new map regimes.
• Village capacity is thin: G.O. Ms. 41 (22-03-2025) created 10,954 GPO posts, but only ~3,550 were filled through the ex-VRO/VRA route, with direct recruitment pending — in many mandals the RI still covers the villages, and Section 13’s village accounts are only as real as the person maintaining them.
• Litigation continues on migrated errors, prohibited-list tagging and the closed rectification window — assume any significant order you pass will be tested.
• Tenant farmers remain unrecorded — the Act, like Dharani, does not capture tenancy or loanee cultivators; a standing criticism you will hear in the field, and a gap no amount of purification closes.

Pilot vs non-pilot mandals

From 2 April 2026, the Integrated Bhu Bharati portal — Revenue, Survey & Land Records, and Stamps & Registration under one roof — has been piloted in 5 mandals: Kosgi (Narayanpet), Amangal (Ranga Reddy), Vatpally (Sangareddy), Kusumanchi (Khammam) and Aswaraopeta (Bhadradri Kothagudem), with phased statewide expansion planned after pilot review (post-June 2026).

The practical difference: in pilot mandals the registration, survey and revenue functions run through the single integrated portal; everywhere else, Bhu Bharati proper handles RoR and registration-cum-mutation while survey records still run on their separate rails. Until rollout completes, procedures differ between pilot and non-pilot mandals — confirm which regime your mandal is under before quoting process steps to a party or a review meeting.

A worked example: one family’s file across the transition

The file that lands on your desk in 2026 usually has a Dharani-era wound in the middle. A typical specimen: Sy.No. 208 of Gollapalli village, 3 acres, ancestral land of one Balamma.

• 2019: Balamma’s father dies. Under the pre-Dharani law a succession enquiry would have followed; instead, Dharani arrives.
• 2020: In the migration, the parcel — succession unmutated, extent slightly off against the sethwar — is parked in Part-B. Balamma discovers this only when her Rythu Bharosa stops and the bank refuses a crop loan renewal.
• 2021–24: She files where she can; there is no correction module and no appeal. The file goes nowhere. This dead zone is not her fault, and it is the single most common backstory in today’s pendency.
• 2025: At the Gollapalli Revenue Sadassu she files afresh; the spot enquiry verifies her possession and heirship.
• 2026: The case is disposed in two coordinated steps: succession mutation to Balamma under Section 7 (Tahsildar — notice to her brother, no objection, order within the 30-day clock), and an extent correction through the Modification Request stream (land value below ₹5 lakh, so the RDO). The parcel leaves Part-B; passbook and temporary Bhudhaar issue; Rythu Bharosa resumes from the next cycle.

Read the dates and you see the officer’s real task in the transition: distinguishing what the party failed to do from what the system made impossible between 2020 and 2025 — and never punishing the second as if it were the first.

Edge cases and common mistakes

• Quoting one procedure statewide. Pilot-mandal and non-pilot procedures differ; module behaviour also evolved through 2025–26. Confirm the live position for your mandal before committing in writing.
• Treating Dharani-era registered documents as suspect. Section 23 saves actions validly taken under the 2020 Act — a clean Dharani registration and auto-mutation stands. The transition invalidated the machinery gaps, not every transaction.
• Applying the closed rectification window mechanically. The closure is reported, its extension unverified, and its interaction with the always-open correction, appeal and civil routes is exactly where litigation is happening. A late applicant may still have a valid path in another channel.
• Forgetting parallel physical registers. Bhu Bharati runs manual village records alongside the portal (Section 13). An office that updates one and not the other is manufacturing the next generation of mismatches.
• Letting the numbers be told to you. Sadassulu intake, correction pendency by value band, sada bainama disposal, Part-B acreage, GPO coverage — review meetings from the Collector’s to the Minister’s run on these figures. The officer who knows them for their own jurisdiction owns the meeting; the one who does not becomes the agenda.

Questions you’ll actually get

“Dharani ruined my record. Whom do I sue?” More useful: the wound now has a statutory dressing. Error → correction module (RDO/Collector by value). Frozen Part-B parcel → purification enquiry. Unregistered old purchase → Section 6 if a 2020 application exists. Fresh grievance against an order → Section 15 appeal. The civil court remains open under Section 18.

“Is my Dharani-era registration valid?” Yes — actions validly taken under the 2020 Act are saved by Section 23. Validity questions, if any, concern the underlying transaction, not the fact it went through Dharani.

“Why does my neighbour’s mandal do this differently?” Possibly an Integrated Bhu Bharati pilot mandal — five mandals run registration, survey and revenue in one portal since April 2026. Same law, different plumbing, until statewide rollout.

“My village has no GPO. Who does the village-level work?” The Revenue Inspector covers, pending direct recruitment to the remaining GPO posts. Applications still move — file at MeeSeva, the Tahsildar office or online.

“I missed the April 2026 rectification deadline. Is my record frozen forever?” No. The Section 4 window is one route among several: corrections, Section 15 appeals against live orders, Section 16 for fraud, and the civil court all remain. Whether the window itself was extended needs checking against current notifications.

What to watch in the field

Keep a one-page personal dashboard of the transition numbers for your own jurisdiction — correction pendency by value band, sada bainama pendency and disposal rate, Part-B acreage remaining, GPO coverage by village, and whether any of your mandals fall in the integrated-portal pilot. Refresh it monthly. Every review meeting runs on exactly these figures, and every petitioner in your Prajavani queue is standing somewhere on this map — the dashboard tells you where, before they finish their first sentence.