Land reclamation: government yet to form task forces

The Hyderabad district administration has finalised a list of beneficiaries for free land regularisation and will soon commence reclaiming the encroached lands for the purpose. However, it has yet to get the protection task force promised by the government.

The government had issued orders last year to constitute a task force with 22 police officials, including officers and constables, who will help the land protection teams in completing their duties, including removal of encroachments. Ranga Reddy district administration was also allocated a team of 22 police personnel.

It was learnt from government sources that progress was limited as an understanding was yet to arrive on modality of the payment to the task force that will given to the district administrations.

When contacted, Collector K. Nirmala said that the matter of task force allocation would be actively pursued after matters pertaining to land regularisation were completed.

“For now, the police department is giving us the support when needed. Recently it supported us when we reclaimed Koti ENT Hospital land on Thursday. A police picket was posted there at our request,” she said.

Reclamation of government lands is expected to the begin in a big way later this year after the government begins handing out ‘pattas’ for regularised encroachments under GO 58 and 59.

The Hyderabad district administration has completed verification of nearly 24,000 of the 68,000 applications under GO 58 which would regularise encroached government land under 125 square yards free of cost. The remaining unverified applications were categorised as claims made on ‘objectionable lands’ and around 34,000 of which were identified as the Central government lands.

The rest of the objectionable applications were for regularisation of State government lands. The Hyderabad district administration began the process of conducting a joint inspection with respective State government departments. Earlier this week, a joint inspection was held by GHMC Commissioner Somesh Kumar and district authorities.

List of beneficiaries for free land regularisation has been finalised