Hyderabad: Pointing out that the Telangana government’s schemes to regularise illegal occupation of government lands apparently benefits encroachers and not the law-abiding citizen, the Hyderabad High Court on Monday made it clear that regularisation will be subject to the final outcome of the PILs filed against the scheme.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar was dealing with PILs filed by Prof. P.L. Vishweshwar Rao and two others and Anwar Khan, a lecturer.

The separate PILs challenged GO Ms No 58 and 59, issued on December 30, 2014, for regularisation of illegally occupied land. The petitioners said the GOs encourage encroachers and anti-social elements who encroach government land using fake documents.

Advocate-general K. Ramakrishna Reddy submitted that it was a policy decision of the government to extend benefits to people living in houses constructed on government land. The scheme was intended to benefit middle income families, he said.

He sought time to file an affidavit on the reasons behind the policy. Giving the time, the bench said it will examine the scheme and told him to inform the applicants that regularisation would depend on the court’s decision.

The petitioners urged the court to direct the government to constitute a committee which can hold an inquiry before the land is regularised and occupancy certificates are handed over. It would then be possible to identify deserving cases and the land sharks, said the petitioners.

TS to step up process to recover encroached land:

Although the TS government is planning a drive to regularise land encroached by individuals, it is stepping up the legal process on cases pending in court to retrieve valuable pieces of land in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts. These vacant lands within Greater Hyderabad limits are worth billions.

In each mandal over 50-60 vacant land parcels are in litigation, which would range from 10-100 acres to a few hundreds of square yards. On the whole 3,000 odd cases are pending under Hyderabad district limits. A circular has been issued to mandal revenue officials on the move to deal with cases pending since years.

K. Nirmala, Hyderabad district Collector said, “These pending cases have been in the backburner for last few years. Now, we intend to expedite the legal process through our special legal teams’ mandal wise. We wanted all the tahasildhars, who would be representing in the court of law to be trained aptly so that each case is dealt, would come to governments favour.”

Unlike earlier, each land case will be the responsibility of the respective MRO. “So far, most of the government land cases have been pending in the court and some due to negligence of the respective officials have been judged in the favour of opponents,” said a source with the district administration.

“Tahasildars and MROs need to ensure that the land upon which the private party obtained status quo from the doesn’t take any construction. In regards to new cases of litigation, the official needs to provide every minute detail along with the records and see that the cases are cancelled at the admission stage itself. The directions of the court should be dealt within the stipulated time so contempt of court is avoided.

The court cases should be pursued regularly and its stage should be updated in the official website and also regularly update to the collector head office. Over 3000 odd cases are pending in various courts including land grabbing, City Civil court, High Court and Supreme Court.

Once the judgment is given in favour of the government, the land should be taken in position and protected by raising boundary walls, said the official.