Hyderabad: Shaken by the scale of a sophisticated fraud in land registration fee payments, the revenue department has reportedly asked the district collectors to conduct an immediate review of registration challans in their jurisdictions, with particular focus on Rangareddy, Medchal Malkajgiri, Sangareddy and Bhuvanagiri Yadadri districts, where land values and registration volumes are high.Preliminary scrutiny has already exposed serious irregularities in nearly 4,800 registration fee payments across Jangaon, Yadadri and Rangareddy districts, with the govt estimating a revenue loss of about Rs 52 crore. Of these cases, nearly 3,000 were reported from Rangareddy and Yadadri districts alone, underscoring the concentration of the fraud in high-value registration zones.
Revenue minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy has ordered a comprehensive probe and directed officials to undertake a thorough verification of 52 lakh registrations completed over the last two years.An official committee probing the fraud reportedly traced the manipulation to a software tool, ‘Burp Suite’, which was allegedly used to alter challan amounts and divert funds to other accounts. Investigators have already identified the involvement of some MeeSeva operators, acting in collusion with revenue officials. In Yadadri district alone, 1,367 suspicious transactions have been flagged, with at least 80 people believed to be involved.The committee is also examining the role of tahsildars, who are responsible for registering agricultural properties and are mandated to verify challan payments before completing registrations.“If an applicant has to pay Rs 1 lakh or Rs 2 lakh towards registration, the operators edited the payment amount, removed 2 to 3 zeros in lakhs by using the software, and made the payment. Unfortunately, revenue officials, especially tahsildars and deputy tahsildars, did not notice this in about 4,800 cases while registering the properties,” a senior official said.In response, the committee, headed by principal secretary (revenue) Lokesh Kumar and CCLA official Manda Makarandu, along with National Informatics Centre, which operates the Bhu Bharati portal, has asked NIC to immediately remove the ‘edit’ option from the system.Sources said under the proposed change, any attempt to edit the registration fee amount would automatically place the transaction on ‘hold’ and trigger alerts to officials, allowing them to verify the payment before proceeding further.Under scannerThe govt is also reviewing whether to continue the ‘citizen’ login option on the portal. At present, citizens can log in using their mobile numbers to make payments, but in many cases MeeSeva operators allegedly used their own numbers, collected cash from citizens and completed payments using their cards.The govt is now considering fixing accountability on MeeSeva centre operators for financial fraud related to registration fee payments.
