Telangana to link land ownership passbooks to Aadhaar

Ahead of the distribution of “pattadar” (land ownership) passbooks to owners from March 11, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday  said that they would have to be linked to their Aadhaar numbers failing which the lands would be considered benami.

He said that farmers who had been assigned lands should also be given these passbooks just like other farmers, an official release said.

The Telangana government, the release said, was introducing a system similar to banks to administer land records. It added that it was a first for any state in the country.

It aimed at facilitating immediate changes in land records whenever any transaction took place, officials said.

Rao said that lands under the possession of beneficiaries should be identified and clarity should be provided on ownership rights.

“The passbooks should be made in the names of the owners. If a farmer having land in the village is also the owner of non-agriculture land, those details also should be entered in an additional column,” Rao said.

Rao said that some people in Medchal, Rangareddy and some other districts had not linked their Aadhaar cards with these records and asked them to do so at the earliest.

He instructed that drinking water should be supplied to all the villages by March 31 under Mission Bhagiratha, the release added.