It may sound unbelievable, even absurd, that the annual lease income from 1,200 acres of cultivable land is a meagre Rs. 4,000. Yes, there are places like Ghonsi village in Kelapur tahsil of Yavatmal district of Maharashtra where tenants pay a lease as low as Rs. 14 per acre.
The loser-owner of the land in question is the Sri Ramachandra Gopalakrishna Mutt in Adilabad which continues the lease of the 70 tenants at the paltry rates for the last 40 years. The Mutt can hardly do anything about it as the Bombay Act, 1956 under which the land is registered in its name bars increase in lease rate by more than eight times which, actually means nothing.
This has prompted the management of the 400-year-old Mutt and the Endowments Department to propose sale of the land to the tenants themselves at market value. The move would realise an income at least Rs. 20 crore for the ancient institution, according to the Mathadhipati, Swamy Yogananda Saraswati.
“The Endowments Department is waiting for the Maharashtra authorities to mutate the ownership in the name of Swamy Yogananda Saraswati before a proposal is put forth to the neighbouring government which has senior BJP leader from Telangana, Ch. Vidyasagar Rao as Governor. The proposal is under consideration of the Telangana authorities.
Meanwhile, the Endowments Department has launched an exercise to acquire ownership rights on the 2,323 acres of land through pattas in the name of the 111 temples in the 31 mandals in Adilabad district to which the land belongs. “Of the total extent, there is no pattadar passbook for 1,923 acres and 174 acres is under encroachment,” the Assistant Commissioner said.
The encroachments can be found on lands under the Gnana Saraswati Temple, Basar, Udasi Mutt, Nirmal, Laxmi Narasimha Swamy temple, Soan in Nirmal mandal, Hanuman temple, Bhainsa, open lands belonging to Marwadi panchayat trust, Adilabad, located in Seetagondi, Nachan Ellapur in Kadem mandal and Seetagondi.
Collector M. Jagan Mohan however, has asked officials to speed up the process of granting patta passbooks to temples where the land is free from encroachments.
One of the difficulties which officials are likely to face in the process is the illegal pattas already issued in the name of those who have purchased the land. The archakas of some temples have sold the lands to buyers who subsequently got it regularised through the Revenue Department.
