Dharani charge list
The registration of agricultural land on Dharani portal is set to begin on Monday. The booking of time slots for registration of land has already been enabled at Mee Seva centres.
It is no exaggeration that there were 33 lakh views of the portal within 24 hours of its launch by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on October 29. What surprised most viewers was the charge list that popped up for services.
The registration department that never charged a rupee for its services so far fixed ₹200 as user charge for booking of time slot for registration. Then, mutation will cost ₹2,500 per acre and another
₹300 was payable towards printing and courier charges of pattadar passbooks.
Heat rises
The heat over Dubbak continued to rise with allegations and counter-allegations from both the ruling TRS and BJP, as the electioneering picked up but what surprised most was the silence of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao — both star campaigners for the large part of the campaign.
It was Finance Minister T. Harish Rao who headed the campaign totally and Mr. KTR did not utter a word on Dubbak. But the ‘cash seizure’ controversy took the heat to the top and irrespective of the truth it was the BJP that gained sympathy in the episode.
The ruling party apparently got a bit shaky after that and KTR was forced to counter with an extensive media chat attacking the BJP and its ‘false’ claims on social media. KCR too, chipped in attacking the Central government and the BJP on the MSP for paddy and take BJP on its claims over its contribution of pensions in Telangana towards the end of the campaign.
Taking potshots
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will rarely miss an opportunity to take potshots at TDP president and former AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
The launch of Dharani portal provided another opportunity to him to take an indirect dig at the TDP president. Explaining about the salient features of Dharani, Mr. Rao said that the “Chief Minister who often spoke about IT” did not try to leverage technology. It was the TRS government which brought IT intervention in land record management, he said. The CM also warned people about vested interests who would try to mislead them about Dharani and said there could be teething problems with the introduction of the new system which can be overcome.
(N. Rahul, R. Ravikanth Reddy and M. Rajeev)
