Bhu Bharati portal not fully operational yet

Dharani portal’s inability to accept multiple grievances in a single application, was resolved, said officials. File

The much-awaited Bhu Bharati portal, which facilitates integrated land management, is not yet fully operational.

Almost a year after the Government issued gazette notification for the Telangana Bhu Bharati (Record of Rights in Land) Act, 2025, the portal is yet to offer full-fledged services to users engaged in land transactions. As a result, the Revenue department is depending on the software of the previous Dharani software with changes in its modules to suit the requirements.

Senior officials said many of the difficulties posed by the Dharani portal, such as its inability to accept multiple grievances in a single application, have been resolved. But problems with server crashes, as it cannot handle the transaction load, continue to haunt the system. “It (development of the new portal) is in advanced stages. Most of the modifications have been done as per the Bhu Bharati Act and given to public usage,” a senior official told The Hindu.

The National Informatics Centre (NIC), which was initially entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the Dharani portal for uninterrupted operations, has also been given the task of developing the new portal and it is likely to become operational soon after multiple testing exercises. Interestingly, technical problems continue to persist in land-related services from almost two decades be it Webland portal of the past, Dharani which developed several problems or Bhu Bharati. Several suggestions made by experts for accepting physical applications have not been considered so far.

The government had received good response to its special drive conducted on pilot basis in some mandals to receive grievances through physical applications and during the revenue sadassus conducted with the receipt of more than eight lakh applications. The process has, however, been put on hold, resulting in difficulties for farmers. “Farmers are asked to submit their grievances through the Mee Seva centres despite repeated complaints on problems encountered in the process,” a legal expert said, citing the reputation of Telangana and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh as pioneers of digital land transactions as reason behind not accepting grievances in physical form.

One of the major problems being encountered in land transactions at present is said to be the mismatch in the extent of lands owned by farmers on the ground and the entries in records. Though the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government conducted the Land Record Updation Programme in a short span of time, this grievance was not addressed fully during the month-long programme conducted ahead of the launch of Dharani. As a result, mistakes in the extent of land ownership continue to create problems for both landowners and officials of the Revenue Department, who are finding it hard to rectify the lapses after conducting field visits.