Hyderabad: Like the demolitions it carried out on Gurukul Trust lands in July last year, the Telangana government is planning another major demolition drive in the city to raze buildings on encroached government lands. On the directions of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao the Revenue department has started identifying buildings whose owners haven’t applied for the recent land regularisation scheme despite having two months time, with a month’s extension.

Mr Rao instructed officials to treat such property owners as “encroachers” and to deal with them sternly and take over their lands. After the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) failed due to poor response, the TS government now wants to create a sense of fear among illegal property owners before coming out with the Building Regularisation Scheme (BRS) in April. The demolition drive is expected after the Budget session of legislature. In this way, the government wants to ensure that BRS becomes successful.

“There is no question of giving another opportunity to people so that they can apply for LRS. Two months were given and the deadline was extended by a month. We are in the process of scrutinising the LRS applications and identifying government lands on which illegal buildings exist. We will treat such property owners as encroachers and deal with them sternly,” said B.R. Meena, principal secretary of the Revenue department.

The government will invoke the provisions of Land Encroachment Act, 1905, Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 1982 and Preventive Detention Act, 1986. The LRS scheme was in force from January 1 to February 28. While the government had expected to earn about Rs 5,000 crore through LRS, the scheme fetched just over Rs 150 crore. The government received 3.47 lakh applications under the “free LRS for poor” category up to 125 sq. yard which fetch no revenues.

In the payment category, it got just 29,000 applications across the state, mostly located in and around the city, covering Hyderabad and Rangareddy districts. Applicants need to pay 12.5 per cent of the basic registration value at the time of submission, which fetched Rs 150 crore. However, Revenue officials are tight-lipped over action against N-Convention, saying that it falls under a different category as the controversy pertains to encroachment of FTL of the Thammidikunta Lake.