Spurious registrations, amendment of land records, bribe for issuing pattadar passbook, illegally selling lands of the freedom fighters – Visakhapatnam district is witnessing land scams, especially with the government lands waning in various mandals.
A very large scale tampering of records in Bheemili and Vishaka rural mandals had occurred with officials’ involvement. The district collector Praveen Kumar setup Special investigation team to investigate the matter.
It may be recalled that B.T.V. Rama Rao a “millionaire tahsildar” along with Deputy Tahsildar and another Assistant were nabbed by ACB officials and subsequently suspended for illegal land encroachment and bribes. Crores of acres of government land became inaccessible. Roads and Buildings (R&B) Minister Ch. Ayyannapatrudu said as of now 5,000 to 6,000 acres were under encroachment.
Several registration changes were made not only to the government lands but also private lands as well. Land encroachments saw a surge in the Chinnagadili Rural Zone by Tahsildar Sankara Rao, Deputy Tahsildar Shyam and other staff who modified thousands of crores of land records.
The facts pertaining to each survey number are being exposed currently. Recently authorities took hold of survey number 331/5 costing hundreds of crores on which several complaints were received in the last decade. In rural mandals, the officers remained clueless about the assignment of lands. Therefore, special teams have been deployed to the rural zone to verify the facts and correct the records.
Lakshmana Rao who was a deceased freedom fighter but a person named Ramakrishna misled the court with wrong documents and sold his land to others. The police detained Ramakrishna and a case has been registered. A similar incident occurred in Anakapalli where Deputy Tahsildar Krishnamurthy sent a report favouring politicos to district collector seeking compensation of 6 crores to 37 beneficiaries. However, the Joint Collector Srijana found that there were only 9 beneficiaries at that time who were already given compensation. The district collector Praveen Kumar is probing into the report sent earlier. Most of the accused have been detained and criminal cases have been filed.
District collector Praveen Kumar cleared air regarding the Daspalla lands the most expensive stretct in Vizag city and said as per the court orders, the lands were private lands. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, the collector said a new record will be created within few months of the records that were tampered in the district. He said that they are looking into Vishaka Rural Mandal records while it will take some time to validate the Madhurawada records. Furthermore, he said that the records will be uploaded to Webland after updating them on the website and due to the discrepancies the records are not yet uploaded. The new records will be prepared based on records available in the Central Records Room. Due to tampering of records, land litigations might be appear. However, the collector said that government lands are not lost.
He said satellite fencing will be done for government land and a pilot will be implemented in a village.
The State government has decided to conduct a public hearing on June 15 over tampering of land records in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister K.E. Krishnamurthy. He said senior officials from the Chief Commissioner of Land Administration (CCLA) and the revenue department would verify the records. The team would conduct the hearing at the district Collector’s office at 11 a.m. This public hearing is a consequence of the farmers demanding an inquiry after the allegations surfaced that officials had fabricated the records by saying that they were missing after the Hudhud cyclone.
Even the leaders of ruling party accused that various political parties indulged in encroachments. Krishnamurthy said that the impacted persons can lodge complaints with necessary documents and subsequent action would be taken accordingly. He requested people not to give into political pressure.
