HYDERABAD: The State Government has decided to take over urban lands in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur and Warangal declared surplus under the Urban Land Ceiling Act (ULC) and not regularised so far.

It has no plans to give yet another opportunity to land owners to regularise them. After three extensions, the deadline to regularise these lands on payment of compounding fee ended on March 31.

Operation launched

About 45,000 applications received till then covered 1,000 hectares constituting only 10 per cent of surplus land. "All the remaining 9,000 hectares now stand transferred to the Government and we have launched operations to take them over," said P. Bhanu Murthy, Special Officer, ULC.

He told The Hindu here on Friday that officials had already taken over 600 acres of Kugukul Ghatkesar Trust land at Madhapur after establishing that these lands did not belong to the Endowments Department as claimed so far. Also, 425 acres had been taken over in the neighbouring Rayadurg area. "We will go for individual plots after taking over bigger chunks," he said. The takeover process has been launched in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur and Warangal too though the extent involved there constitutes only 10 per cent. Mr. Murthy said these lands would be handed over to the MROs so that they could be used for public purposes through agencies like Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, Andhra Pradesh Housing Board and UDAs.

Rs. 600 crores revenue

He said the regularisation had fetched revenue of Rs. 600 crores, including Rs. 456 crores in Hyderabad alone. He attributed the poor response to regularisation offer to the mistaken belief among the occupants that their structures would not be demolished and that the ULC Act would be repealed.

He said there was no proposal to repeal the Act.

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