Telangana’s 22-A Solution: Please Wait for the File

Telangana’s Congress government has discovered the perfect land policy: nobody gets to use the land, but everyone gets a speech about it. The 22-A prohibited list covers nearly 98 lakh acres, according to Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s Assembly statement — 42.61 lakh acres of forest land, 29.35 lakh acres of government land and 24.63 lakh acres of assigned land. Somewhere between those categories sits the citizen whose registration is blocked, whose loan is stalled and whose property has acquired the legal status of a national secret.

The administration’s answer is a committee, a survey, new regularisation policies and a 30-day inquiry. This is governance by future tense: relief will come after the file is examined, the land is categorised, the categories are reviewed and the review is presumably submitted to another committee. Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy has apologised for the hardship, then explained that the system dates back to 2007 and continued under the BRS government. The Congress has inherited the mess, reduced it, measured it and discussed it at length. It has not yet made it disappear.

The arithmetic is being presented as achievement. Ponguleti says the listed land fell from 1,02,52,690 acres in December 2023 to 1,02,05,250 acres by August 2026 — a reduction of 47,440 acres — while registration revenue rose by ₹1,359 crore. Fine. But a smaller mountain is still a mountain if the person standing beneath it cannot sell, mortgage or regularise their property. Revenue has moved. The public has not.

Revanth Reddy has also ordered an inquiry into alleged irregularities involving lands linked to K. Chandrashekar Rao’s family and raised allegations of nearly ₹1 lakh crore in land-related wrongdoing under the previous BRS regime. Those are allegations, not findings. An inquiry is not a conviction, however confidently it is delivered from the Assembly microphone. The Congress government is entitled to investigate the past. It is not entitled to use the past as a substitute for unlocking the present.

The state did not elect Revanth Reddy to become the most articulate caretaker of a frozen land file. At present, the land remains prohibited and only the excuses have been regularised.