The order pertaining to denotification of land falling under the Section 22-A category appears to have put the district administration in a catch-22 situation as some of the pattas have a lock-in period of two years.
The State government has incorporated the Section 22-A prohibiting the sale and registration of the land notified as barren, assigned, poramboke and government land.
However, the government, in the first phase of the land regularisation scheme, distributed around 30,000 pattas to beneficiaries in 2016 after issuing the G.O. 296 and another 20,000 pattas this year as per the G.O. 388.
Clarification sought
Recently, the district administration has issued an order urging people to apply for obtaining NoC with regard to the land notified under the Section 22-A(1)(d) under Land Ceiling Act and get the stretches de-notified.
The move now appears to be snowballing into a major issue as all the 50,000 pattas given away in the last two years are government land with a lock-in period of two years.
The lock-in period for the 30,000 pattas that were distributed in the first phase is set to expire by the year-end as those belong to the government. This means that the lands fall under the notified category and cannot be sold unless those are de-notified. The lock-in period of the lands related to 20,000 pattas will end in 2020.
Obtaining NoC
It is learnt that the district administration has already written to the government, seeking clarification on the issue.
In an attempt to expedite the regularisation of the Section-22 A lands, Joint Collector G. Srijana has opened a channel and applicants can pay ₹ 500 as service charge at Mee Seva Centre at the Collector’s office and obtain a receipt. The applicants can get their land surveyed by an agency approved by the Joint Collector’s office and submit the documents to complete the de-notification process.
Giving more details, Ms. Srijana said that basically the lands in question belonged to the government but those had been encroached upon and registered with sale deeds.
In 2012, the court had ordered that a list of such lands be prepared, but it was not followed and subsequently, the High Court had issued an order in this regard in 2014.
According to officials, such lands can be classified under four to five categories such as land belonging to departments such as Visakhapatnam Port Trust, GVMC, VUDA or Defence lands, lands belonging to the Endowments Department or Wakf Board, lands that fall under Urban Land Ceiling (ULC) and Revenue land.
“The department lands and endowment lands cannot be regularised or de-notified. The decision is to be taken by the respective departments. But Special Officer ULC has the right to regularise the surplus land taken by private individual with a fee and even Revenue Department can also do so,” Ms. Srijana told The Hindu.
Admitting that it is not only private individuals who are at fault, but there is a possibility of collusion of officials, Ms. Srijana said that it’s time the loopholes were plugged.
So far, the district administration has received around 1,400 applications of which 1,100 have been disposed off. But 95 % of the disposed pleas have been rejected as most of thm are related to D-patta land.
“People can even get back to us if they feel that their land was de-notified erroneously by the department,” the Joint Collector said.
