Telangana’s Land Fix Comes With an 18-Month Waiting Room

Telangana’s land crisis has now entered the Congress government’s preferred administrative format: a committee, a portal, a survey, several historical villains and no immediate relief for the people whose property remains unusable. Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy calls Section 22-A a “legacy issue”. The government says the prohibited-land area has fallen from 1,02,52,690 acres when Congress came to power to 1,02,05,250 acres by August 30, 2026. Private land on the list has also declined. This is being presented as correction. To the owner still unable to transact, it is correction in the same way a locked door is improved by repainting it.

Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy has supplied the longer historical essay. The Nizam era, Section 22-A, revenue officials, the BRS government and Dharani have all been summoned to explain the present. Congress, having inherited the file, has promised surveys, regularisation policies and a solution to “all land-related problems” in the next one-and-a-half years. There is one sharper deadline: the survey of KCR’s family lands must report within 30 days. Telangana’s new model of urgency is clear. A former Chief Minister’s property gets a calendar. Everyone else gets a committee.

The Chief Minister has also argued that the controversy concerns only 3.73 lakh acres of private patta land and is being exaggerated. This is a brave definition of “only”, particularly from a government explaining why land cannot be sold, why whole survey numbers were blocked over smaller disputes and why the uploaded list contained acknowledged errors. Ponguleti says officials acted “on a war footing”. The war reduced toll-free calls from 117 on August 28 to 56 on September 7. The land remains on the list. The telephone is recovering.

T Harish Rao is demanding a deadline and a white paper, a reasonable demand from an Opposition party whose own Dharani project made centralised confidence look like a land policy. But Congress has not repaired that model so much as inherited its vocabulary and added a blame parade. Every speech has a number, every number has a defence, and every defence has a promise. The only missing entry is the date on which an ordinary Telangana owner gets to use their own land.

The government has delivered a temporary explanation for a permanent inconvenience.