Telangana HC’s Landmark Verdict On Hafeezpet Lands

In a landmark judgement, the Telangana High Court ruled that the entire extent of the 140 acres in Hafeezpet, Serilingampally is private land. In a setback to Telangana government and the State Waqf Board, the High Court ruled that neither revenue nor registration officials could stop the Hafeezpet land registrations pertaining to survey number 80. The present market value of the disputed Hafeezpet lands is worth a whopping Rs 4,200 crore.

The HC’s judgement gains significance especially since one of the petitioners Katikaneni Praveen Kumar allegedly kidnapped by former AP Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhilapriya, her husband and their henchmen and was later rescued by the cops recently. The sensational abduction case was in connection with the same extent of land in Hafeezpet.

“This land is neither state land nor waqf land. This is pure private land,” the High Court bench said in its judgement yesterday. The bench also directed the Telangana government and the Waqf board to pay Rs 50,000 each to all the three petitioners who challenged the T-government and waqf authorities’ bid to snatch the land rights from them.

In its judgement, the HC has set aside the AP Waqf Board’s December, 2013 notification attaching the 140 acre land to Dargah Hazrath Salar-e-Auliya. The bench also directed the Telangana government to delete the “unlawful entries” made by the officials in revenue records to show the lands as a state property along with the entries made in Muntakhab by Waqf officials.

The bench agreed with the argument that the Telangana government had lost the case in the Supreme Court several times in the past and was only reinventing methods to continue the litigation. The bench directed the government to sub-divide the land in survey numbers 80 as 80/A, 80/B, 80/C and 80/D in pursuance of the final decree and the settlement deed (bearing document No. 2630 of 2016) and mutate the names of Praveen Kumar and co-petitioners.