Owners of thousands of properties in the twin cities can soon register, sell or transfer them now. In a move that brings major relief to owners, the list of nearly 40,000 private properties will soon be removed from the Prohibitory Order Book, also known as prohibitory property register. These properties, located at various places in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, were entered into the POB due to faulty software and procedures adopted by the Hyderabad District Collectorate authorities during an exercise held over a year ago with the intention of protecting the government properties.
Thus, owners who wanted to sell could not do so as the registration department told prospective buyers that the property was listed as government-owned in POB. Several such properties are located in Banjara Hills, Bahadurpura, Nampally, Saidabad, Balkampet, Azampura, Sanjeev Reddy Nagar and Chikkadpally, to name a few. Many of these properties were in existence for years and changed hands several times too. The exercise to identify and prepare pucca records of government lands was taken up during the tenure of the then Hyderabad collector N. Gulzar. Though the state government had issued a G.O. towards this direction in 2007, none of the district collectors took it up then, fearing a backlash from politicians.
However, the exercise was taken up during Mr Gulzar’s tenure. During field visits made by revenue officials to the Ameerpet area, local residents put up stiff resistance, threatening to manhandle them. The task was then given to a private agency whereafter the mistakes crept in. Maps available with GHMC and revenue authorities were superimposed as part of the exercise to compare door numbers and survey numbers. Nearly 90,000 properties were identified as government-owned and over 30 per cent of them were actually private properties.
A letter has been written to the government, explaining how these errors came about and a rectification exercise will commence once approval is received from the government.