Telangana’s Section 22A controversy: Whose land? Who prohibits? Who encroaches? – The South First

Section 22A is turning into a euphemism for governmental encroachment upon people’s privately owned land. opal

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Synopsis: Telangana’s 22A controversy has left thousands of landowners unable to sell, mortgage or register property that they claim is privately owned. Even the Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s house was found to be on 22A land, in what the government admitted is a ‘mistake’. Is this much communism appropriate for this government? And is it possible at all?

“Say, ‘the land is mine,’ and the land will burst out laughing,” said Vemana, the famous 17th-century Telugu philosopher and poet.

In fact, nature does not belong to human beings; human beings belong to nature. In nature, which has been evolving for millions and billions of years, it is only human society, in the course of its few thousand years, that has created the notion of private property—something unknown to every other living being—and, for the sake of it, nurtured hatred and hostility, waged wars and shed blood.

Yet, despite being such a terrible source of violence, human beings have not lost their attachment to private property, to land of their own. Even if they have lived lives in which their feet never touched soil, even if they have had no bond or attachment to the earth, it is enough if there are letters and numbers on paper saying that the land belongs to them. It was this eagerness of so many people to acquire land on paper that gave land a price. That price kept rising until it reached unimaginable, even vulgar, proportions.

The greed for land

A single square yard is said to cost Rs. 2.5 lakh in certain prime city neighbourhoods. About 150 years ago, the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote a story titled How Much Land Does a Man Need? He concluded that a man does not need hundreds or thousands of acres to bury his dead body; six feet of earth is enough.

However much philosophical discussion there may have been, from Vemana to Tolstoy, about land as private property, in the end a human being needs only a few yards of earth. We do not know in what emptiness, in what cosmic dust, we existed before birth, or into what emptiness, into what cosmic dust, we will dissolve after death. But during the time we live on this earth, we need a little land. We need a nest, a home. We need agricultural land.

We do not need hundreds or thousands of acres out of excessive greed, but we do need a minimum amount of land for human survival. That is security. That is dignity. That is assurance. That is why laws came into existence to protect private property in land, along with governmental machinery to enforce those laws, and even the use of force for that purpose.

It is precisely the question of what happens when governments that came into existence to protect people’s rights over land themselves ride roughshod over those rights that is being asked in Telangana today. The name of this knotty question is 22A. It is a euphemism for governmental encroachment upon people’s privately owned land. Section 22A, which has sparked a fierce dispute between the ruling party and the Opposition, is generating more heat than light. Even people who do not know what 22A actually is have entered the arena, challenging the other side and rising on one leg in anger.

How 22A fuelled a controversy

When thousands of petitions reached the State High Court from people complaining that, because their land had been entered as prohibited land under 22A, they were unable to sell it, buy it, mortgage it and obtain loans against it, and that housing loans were not being sanctioned for houses built on such land, the High Court ordered in August 2025 that the 22A list should not be kept secret and should be made public.

Instead of submitting to the High Court the 22A list that was already in their possession, or making it public, the revenue officials began preparing a new 22A list. The new 22A list so prepared remained riddled with errors and controversies. Those who tried to sell their land or purchase new land, and those who went to banks seeking loans for houses they were purchasing, suddenly discovered after December 2025 that the land was on the 22A list. An uproar began that this new 22A list had been prepared either while the land records were being transferred from the earlier Dharani system to Bhu Bharati, or subsequently, and that in the process numerous privately owned lands had been turned into prohibited lands in the database.

There were allegations that there had been instances in which officials, after saying that a particular piece of land could not be registered because it was on the 22A list, took bribes, removed the land from that list and registered it—in other words, that the 22A list had become a royal road to corruption. The Opposition alleged that private lands were being declared government lands in this manner so that people in high places in the government could encroach upon them, purchase them for a pittance, or threaten the owners and extract commissions. The ruling party, in turn, countered that the 22A list itself was a conspiracy of the Opposition. The Opposition also held meetings with groups of people affected by 22A.

It is reported that thousands of acres in many districts, including Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Medchal, Sangareddy and Yadadri Bhuvanagiri, and ultimately even in villages, have thus entered the 22A list “by mistake”. According to the Revenue Minister himself, 95,735 properties in the State have been included in the prohibited list in this manner. Houses purchased 30 or 40 years ago, in which people have been living ever since, have also been included under 22A.

Ultimately, it turned out that even the Chief Minister’s house was on 22A land. The Revenue Minister himself admitted that mistakes had occurred. A call centre was also established to receive complaints regarding disputed 22A lands.

What exactly is 22A and how it came to Telangana?

Through the controversy of the past two or three weeks, many people have come to know that 22A is a provision of the Registration Act, 1908, under which the government has the power to prevent the transfer of government lands, assigned lands, tribal lands, endowment lands, forest lands, surplus lands above the land-ceiling limit, lands acquired for public purposes and Wakf lands, and to prevent their registration merely based on sale and purchase documents.

But this is not as simple as saying that if the Revenue Department of the government declares any land to be 22A land, that land can neither be sold nor purchased. The matter is legally very complicated, entangled in numerous government orders and interventions by the courts, and needs to be understood in detail.

There is a debate among historians as to whether private ownership of land existed at all in the history of Indian society. The colonial government introduced into India the concept of individual ownership of land that existed in Britain in the last decades of the eighteenth century and began survey settlements. Lands began to be registered in the names of individuals. A series of laws relating to this were enacted in 1864, 1866, 1871 and 1877, and eventually a comprehensive law was enacted in 1908. Several amendments were made to it subsequently. However, the original Registration Act of 1908 contained no provision called 22A.

Not only that, the Registration Act introduced by the colonial government in British India in 1908 did not apply to the Hyderabad State in the same manner. It was not immediately made applicable here. Five years after the Registration Act was enacted in British India, in 1913–14, the Hyderabad Registration of Instruments Act, 1323 Fasli, was enacted, and ten years later, in 1918–19, the Hyderabad Registration of Instruments Act, 1328 Fasli, came into existence. Until Hyderabad State was integrated into the Indian Union in 1948—or, for that matter, even until 1950—the 1328 Fasli law continued to be in force in Telangana.

For the first time, the Hyderabad Land Improvement Loans Act, 1950 established that, henceforth, the 1908 Act would be in force in place of the 1328 Fasli law. Thus, the Registration Act of 1908, which entered Telangana in this manner, became fully established after the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. Section 22A was added to it through an amendment made by the Andhra Pradesh government in 1999. This is the history of how the present controversial 22A entered Telangana.

However, the original version of that 22A provision said that the registration of documents “prohibited by public policy” should be barred. The Andhra Pradesh High Court struck it down in 2005 on the ground that the expression “public policy” was vague, could be interpreted in any manner, and was therefore invalid. The Andhra Pradesh government then made another amendment in 2007, replacing that vague expression with a specific prohibition on transactions relating to five categories of land and making it clear that such transactions should not be registered. This law of the undivided State became, without alteration, the law of Telangana after 2014.

What emerges from this complicated history is that the prohibition is not on land transactions as such, but only on the registration of those transactions. The 22A provision now in force prohibits the registration of five categories of land. They are:

1. Lands whose transfer is prohibited under another law.
2. Government lands.
3. Endowment and Wakf lands.
4. Surplus lands above the prescribed ceiling.
5. Other lands whose registration is prohibited by government orders.

A Communist turn

In fact, there is no major controversy over the first four categories. But the fifth category, once again because of its vagueness, provides scope for arbitrariness, corruption and the unchecked discretion of government officials. Under this fifth category, the government can bring within 22A lands that it had earlier allotted to local bodies, educational institutions, places of worship, cultural organisations, religious institutions and charitable organisations, as well as lands under attachment in judicial disputes or for tax evasion.

However, there are conditions under this provision. The District Collector is required to submit a detailed report regarding the land being prohibited, and the notification prohibiting it is required to be made public. There are also orders prescribing a specific procedure for imposing such a prohibition. But at present, the list has been prepared secretly, without informing the owners. It is not known where the detailed reports submitted by the Collectors are. The prescribed procedure has not actually been followed.

When a transaction comes before a Tahsildar or a Sub-Registrar, they say, on the basis of the computer database available to them, that the land is 22A land and therefore its registration is prohibited. Ultimately, this could be a problem with the computer database, a mistake by the staff who entered the data, or, as the Opposition alleges, a deliberate conspiracy engineered by those in higher positions.

Whatever the case may be, the government is now turning its guns on the very concept of “private property”, which people in contemporary society regard as sacred. Is this much communism appropriate for this government? Is it possible at all, at this point?

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(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)