Dharani Portal: Telangana HC Issues Stay!

The Telangana High Court issued interim orders in connection with registration of property details on the Dharani portal. The court, on Tuesday, took up hearing of three petitions raising doubts on the safety and security of the details filed on the portal.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had launched Dharani portal for land and property registrations at Moodu Chintalapally in Medchal-Malkajgiri district on the outskirts of Hyderabad just a few days ago.

The court directed the Telangana government not to collect details of non-agricultural properties and not to pressurise owners of agricultural lands for Aadhaar details.

At the same time, the court also asked the state government not to share the information collected for the portal with third parties. “Basing on what laws have you begun collecting Aadhaar and caste details,” the court asked the government authorities.

The High Court judges reminded that the new Revenue Act introduced in Telangana recently was relating to agricultural lands only.

Pointing out that there was no information about security of the data in the Dharani portal documents, the court asked the officials about the steps taken to ensure safety to the details provided by the owners of agricultural lands. The court expressed concern that if data was misused then it would mean breach of privacy and trust of the public in the government.

The court directed the Telangana government to submit an affidavit providing all the details about which it had raised during the hearing.

It is significant to note that during the launch of the property portal, KCR claimed that path-breaking Dharani would be one-stop solution for all issues pertaining to lands in the state and hoped that it would emerge as a trend-setter in the country.