HC seeks government response over delay in prohibited land list publication
Prohibited properties aren’t marked on the official website, potentially misleading citizens into purchasing restricted land unknowingly.
- Petition’s core issue : Registration department has not uploaded the list of Section 22-A prohibited properties on its official website.
- Risk highlighted : Buyers may unknowingly purchase land that cannot legally be registered, due to lack of public information.
- Judge’s observation : Justice NV Shravan Kumar noted that even nala conversion land under agricultural holdings should have details made public.
- Next hearing : The matter was adjourned to August 20.
- Petitioner : Amera Pasha, a Hyderabad-based advocate.
- Petitioner’s claim : Prohibited properties aren’t marked as such online, misleading potential buyers.
- Counsel’s submission : Vijay Gopal said repeated attempts to check the list were met with responses claiming it was “under review.”
- Additional argument : Gopal said the government can choose not to register assigned lands, but must still disclose such properties publicly, citing a Supreme Court judgment on the matter. Telangana HC seeks government response over missing prohibited property list on registration website
The Telangana High Court has directed the state government to respond to a petition that raises concerns over the registration department’s failure to publish, on its official website, the list of properties classified under the prohibited category as per Section 22-A of the Registration Act.
Citing a media report, the petitioners argued that this ongoing lapse is denying the public access to reliable, up-to-date information about which properties fall under the prohibited list. Without this information readily available, prospective buyers are left exposed to the risk of purchasing land that, legally speaking, cannot even be registered — a scenario that could leave them financially and legally stranded down the line.
The case came up before Justice NV Shravan Kumar, who weighed in on the matter with a pointed observation: even properties like nala conversion land, which falls within the broader category of agricultural holdings on the prohibited list, ought to have its details made accessible to the public. The judge’s comment underscored a broader concern that transparency shouldn’t have exceptions, even for more technical or less commonly known categories of restricted land. Following this observation, the court chose not to rule immediately, instead pushing the matter to August 20 for continued hearing.
The petitioner in the case, Amera Pasha, is a practicing advocate based in the city. Her core grievance is straightforward: properties that are officially part of the prohibited list simply don’t appear as such on the department’s website. This gap, she contends, effectively misleads ordinary citizens, who have no easy way of knowing that a particular piece of land is off-limits for registration — putting them at risk of unknowingly investing in property they legally shouldn’t.
Representing Pasha, advocate Vijay Gopal laid out for the court just how persistent the problem has been. He explained that his client had tried, on multiple occasions, to access details about prohibited-category properties through the registration department’s website. Each time, though, she ran into the same response — that the list was “under review” and would be made public “soon.” According to Gopal, this promise has yet to materialize, leaving the public still in the dark.
Gopal also addressed a related but distinct point during the hearing: while he acknowledged that the state government is well within its rights to decide against registering assigned lands, he argued that this discretion shouldn’t come at the cost of transparency. In his view, even if such lands remain unregistered by policy, the public still deserves to know which properties fall into that category. To back this argument, he referred to a Supreme Court ruling, which he said had already established that details of properties placed under such restricted categories must be disclosed publicly, rather than kept opaque or inaccessible.
Taken together, the arguments presented paint a picture of a system where the rules exist on paper, but the practical means for citizens to actually access and verify those rules have fallen short. The court’s decision to seek a formal response from the government suggests it sees enough merit in these concerns to warrant a closer look, rather than dismissing the petition outright.