Dharani portal a bigger scam than KLIP, charges Javadekar

Hyderabad: Former Union Minister and BJP Telangana election in-charge Prakash Javadekar here on Friday described Dharani portal a bigger land scam than the Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP).

Addressing the media, he said the scam was ‘biggest’ to cheat people and impacted lakhs of farmers. ‘The portal has caused people to lose valuable lands. But the government is trying to project it as one medicine for all ills’.

He alleged the government had scrapped the VRO system to ensure land records were not available to anyone. "The revenue records have been changed in Dhrani. Names of landowner’s pattadar passbooks and possession records have been changed recording them as 'benami', and 'illegal encroachers'.

He said the Center, under NIC, developed software for land records and made it available for all States. The State governments could update the same, making suitable changes according to needs. Initially land record modernisation was given to TCS. It had handled the records for three months, but left after the government's pressure.

Javadekar alleged TCS had to leave as it did not yield to demands of the government, to executive the project in violation of rules. Following this, the government had roped in another entity, ILFS, which had gone into insolvency. It had brought in another company and handed over the Centre-provided software to Terra CIS.

"When the new company had made the land records a mess the government had brought in new rules in violation of the Central guidelines. All this led to complaints resulting in large-scale changes in land records. Irregularities took place in agriculture lands, private, government, endowments, water tanks, refugees (evacuee properties), industrial, Bhoodan, ex-servicemen, freedom fighters, Pyga and Blue Book lands," he alleged.

The BJP leader said credible sources claim that a private foreign company had designed a mobile application and accessed the digital documents in Dhrani. The company had reportedly mined data by scanning land records of Dhrani with different sequential codes. "Everyone knows that a private company can't conduct deep mining of government data," but, in Telangana, key government data has been mined by a private company, he pointed out.

As the government did not consider facts on ground, made the land records system tipsy turvy without conducting gram sabhas resulting in missing survey numbers. The government failed to resolve issues.

There are 10-15 lakh notional accounts without any pattas, lakhs of acres of land shown under prohibitory category. The party will investigate land scams of Dharani and render justice to the land-owners, he assured.