The state seems to be stealthily moving to gift away government land in the upmarket Banjara Hills to private parties. The Hyderabad district revenue administration and a private individual, Ghousia Begum, have been fighting over five acres of land near Kalinga Bhavan in Banjara Hills for several years now. On Tuesday, chief secretary Pankaj Dwivedi issued orders (GO Ms No 2342) constituting a Group of Ministers to examine “issues relating to regularisation of lands.”
The order gave the misleading impression that the GoM will deal with the regularisation of encroached government lands across the state under GO 166, when in fact inquiries by this newspaper revealed that the GoM was constituted exclusively to deal with the Ghousia Begum case. Moreover, the Government Order seems to jump the gun somewhat. “It is surprising to see the order refers to regularisation of the land, which is a final step in favour of the private party, even before the GoM has started its deliberations on how to resolve the land dispute,” sources pointed out.
Inquiries also revealed that the revenue department, while circulating the file for constituting the GoM, specifically mentioned that it would deal with the Ghousia Begum case only. The issue has been pending since 2004. The previous Rosaiah government had constituted a GoM to resolve the dispute. Sources said Hyderabad Collector Mr Gulzar had submitted a note to the GoM that the entire land belonged to the government out of which possession of three acres was already given to the police and the remainder is part of a water stream.
With the change of government, the Group of Ministers was scrapped and the private party approached the High Court seeking directions to resolve the dispute. When the state government informed the High Court about the previous efforts like constituting a Group of Ministers, the court asked the government to reconstitute the Group of Ministers and resolve the dispute “based on merits.”