LRS deadline ends in Telangana, the wait for land regularisation begins

The Telangana government's deadline for receiving applications under the Land Regularisation Scheme (LRS) ended on October 31, and the long wait for regularisation of the lands begins for the lakhs of applicants. The LRS 2020 is the second such exercise carried out by the Telangana government, the latest scheme allows those with illegal structures with sale deeds to regularise their land.

Pradeep* who filed applications for four plots under the scheme says the government portal with glitches never made a mention of when the regularisation process will be complete. His concern arises over the government’s failure to regularise applications filed under the earlier LRS scheme in 2015.

The scheme has received over 24 lakh applications as of October 31, however, appeals are also being made over social media to extend the deadline further. In the last week of the deadline, many of the users claimed they were unable to receive OTPs to make transitions and thus unable to file applications. Several Non-Residential Indian (NRI) applicants also struggled to get their applications filed as the delivery of OTPs through emails were stopped briefly.

Pradeep who did not wish to be identified by his real name says once the application is filed with the LRS website, it does not provide the user with any further information on when the regularisation process would commence, "One of the four transactions we made failed but I was not informed if uploading the application had failed, so we applied again. I was also not informed if the money will be credited back, they didn't even have customer care for an application portal going to be used by lakhs of people. We expect better from government service," he said. Pradeep had filed the applications in September but hasn't heard back from the Municipal Administration and Urban Development overseeing the project since then.

On October 13, the state government clarified that all pending LRS applications filed in 2015 will be examined and disposed of under the LRS scheme of 2020 that had just concluded.

“There are no details on when they will verify the documents we have submitted,” says Pradeep. “One of the worrying aspects I noted was that there was no receipt to the transactions being made. At the end when the website says your transaction is successful there is a ‘download’ button that shows up, but when you click on it nothing happens. If you take a screenshot of the transaction successful page, you are lucky, or else there is no proof that you have made an LRS application," he added.

Dr Narasimha Reddy Donthi, Public Policy Reviewer said that the government has failed to carry out an on-ground survey and verify the 2015 LRS applications due to the sheer task of ground verification involved, "The officials with the municipal administration have to visit the location to approve the layouts in order to regularise them, but this has not happened yet. The lack of a ground survey opens up room for graft, as it allows people to file applications for regularisation even before the actual construction has begun," he said.