The Land Titling Act is snowballing into a major controversy in Andhra Pradesh. Ahead of the Assembly elections, the legal Act, introduced by the YCP government last year, has become a hot topic for discussion among the ruling and opposition parties, with the leaders trading barbs over its authenticity. From the last one week ‘Land Titling Act’ is the main agenda for opposition, even public is more concerned about this. It is the main discussion point in the villages.
While the opposition parties have been alleging that it is replete with loopholes to allow the ruling YCP leaders loot people’s land, the YCP leaders have been responding that it was the BJP government which introduced the Act and that the same party is in alliance with the TDP. In such a case, how can the opposition parties make such charges, they asked. The opposition parties are quick to allege that the YCP had modified the Act to suit their need and then implemented the Act.
If the Act has to be implemented as per the guidelines of the Niti Aayog, an ‘officer’ has to be appointed exclusively as the Title Registration Officer (TRO) but the YCP government has conveniently changed it that any ‘person’ can be the TRO with a malafide intention. The Opposition parties allege that there is a conspiracy behind this modification and say that they would bring in some officer who is in the favour of YCP to take advantage of the scheme.
The opposition parties also pointed out that the YCP government has reduced the duration for raising objections after notification of inclusion of the owner’s name in the digital records to two years while Niti Aayog stated that it should be three years.
One other difference pointed out by the opposition parties is that while the Niti Aayog mentioned that if the TRO identified any dispute with regard to any land, he should register the details under Sec 10 and forward the same to the Land Dispute Resolution Officer, Jagan’s government did not make any mention of the LDRO.
The Opposition parties have been explaining about these differences to the public and trying to make them understand that the Land Titling Act introduced by Jagan government would be detrimental to their interests.
Ahead of the elections, the YCP leaders fear that the Land Act would do more damage to the party’s prospects, as the Opposition parties’ argument seems to be more logical and appealing to the public.