Ghost villages on paper: 413 Telangana hamlets never officially mapped; real estate boom meets legal chaos

Time of India

5 hours ago

HYDERABAD: Even in the 21st century,
Telangana
continues to grapple with a colonial-era legacy-413 villages across the state have never been surveyed and mapped. What makes this more startling is that nearly 25% of these villages fall within the rapidly expanding Hyderabad metropolitan region, where land prices have skyrocketed to crores per acre.
These villages, including upscale and rapidly urbanising areas such as Hafeezpet, Raidurg Paigah, Budvel, Manikonda Jagir, and Future City areas like Kandukur, Meerkhanpet and Mucherla, have no official land survey records or authenticated village maps. Of the total 413 unsurveyed villages, 58 fall in Rangareddy district and 11 in Medchal Malkajgiri, placing them at the heart of Telangana's urban expansion.
According to official sources, out of Telangana's 11,894 revenue villages, several hundred were excluded from land surveys conducted during the Nizam era, primarily because they were deemed agriculturally unproductive and thus not prioritised for tax-based documentation. These unsurveyed villages are spread across the erstwhile districts of Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Medak, Khammam, Nalgonda, and Mahbubnagar.
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Undo
Absence of records led to flood of
litigations
Post-Independence, neither the united AP govt nor Telangana state took corrective steps. Several of these areas remained unmapped or were recorded using rudimentary and often inaccurate methods.
"In many villages, maps are either missing or unsigned, and critical documents like tippons and sethwars are absent or forged," said a senior revenue official. "Without these, there is no clarity on ownership or boundaries," he explained.
In Rangareddy and Medchal Malkajgiri districts, where land prices can exceed ₹10 crore per acre, the absence of reliable land records has led to a flood of litigations, title disputes, encroachments, and fabricated claims.
In Hyderabad's northwestern corridors, particularly Kukatpally, Moosapet and Medchal, similar issues persist. Buyers and developers often enter into transactions with incomplete legal backing, risking future litigation.
According to experts, land records in these unsurveyed villages often depend solely on pahanis (annual land records), which record possession but not ownership or boundaries in the absence of survey numbers.
"Between 1910 and 1940, the Nizam's govt conducted only partial land surveys, mostly carried out by teams from Marathwada. In the absence of official maps and survey numbers, most farmers have relied on notional surveys while continuing to possess and cultivate these lands," explained land law expert M Sunil Kumar.
Land survey expert Ch V Subba Rao said two types of land surveys were carried out in Telangana-both during the Nizam era and later. "The Theodolite survey, which uses precision instruments, was conducted in some villages and provides accurate land measurements. In other areas, a less precise method known as the 'chain survey' was used," said Subba Rao, former joint director of the survey and land records department.