Hyderabad: Dharani panel to summon Somesh Kumar

Hyderabad : The five-member official committee on Dharani is likely to summon former Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar to seek clarifications on the functioning of Dharani portal.

As part of the study of the portal, the official committee, headed by Principal Secretary Land Revenue and Registration Naveen Mittal, wanted to question some of the top officials, including Somesh Kumar, who played a key role in the creation of ‘controversial’ Dharani portal.

Officials said the committee would study the Dharani portal in detail and every technical issue involved in the functioning of the portal will be analysed. It required a lot of inputs to understand the technicalities as well as the format used to register the lands and the release of mutations and title deeds to the farmers.

“A group of Revenue officials was part of the designing of the Dharani portal. All of them worked under the direct supervision of then Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar who also held FAC (Full Additional Charge) of the Land Revenue department,” officials said, adding that the committee will call for a meeting with all officials and in-charges of Dharani at the time of the creation of the portal. The committee would also probe the role of the contract agencies which were roped into the management of Dharani after the portal launched. Doubts have already arisen in awarding the works for the creation of the portal and its functioning after its launch in October 2020. “All these issues will be part of the study of the performance of the Dharani portal,” officials said.

The first meeting of the official committee held on Thursday discussed the anomalies found in the functioning of the portal and the challenges to address the grievances of the farmers who lodged lakhs of complaints on the ownership of the farmlands due to missing of the survey numbers and other land related data on the portal. Speaking to newsmen after the meeting, committee member Kodanda Reddy said the details of the lands were not uploaded in the portal and the big challenge before the committee is to sort out every issue and address the grievances of the farmers who were waiting for clear title deeds and mutations for years. Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy already announced plans to replace Dharani portal with Bhumata portal soon.