Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president A. Revanth Reddy reiterated his allegations that sensitive information in the Dharani portal was now with one individual posing danger to safety of land records of lakhs of farmers instead of the government that should have control over the records.
At a press conference here on Wednesday, Mr Revanth Reddy said large-scale fraud was being committed using Dharani portal information by those handling it. The PCC chief sought to know whom this individual was close to and how the entire portal landed with an unknown company after passing through the hands of two companies.
Mr. Reddy said that IL&FS company handled all land transactions in the State through Dharani portal and in fact, this company was bankrupt and it had cheated the banks after borrowing ₹90,000 crore. Interestingly. But the Telangana government had entered into an agreement with the company which was in losses. The IL&FS then set up a subsidiary company, Terrasys Technologies Limited, for the management of Dharani.
The Terrasys Company sold 52.26% stake to Falcon Company of the Philippines for ₹1,275 crore on November 25, 2021. Falcon was launched in October 2021, just a month before the acquisition. Now Terrasys Company had given 99% share to Falcon Company. After this, Mr. Sridhar Raju had joined the company taking the entire Dharani portal into his hands, Mr. Reddy alleged.
The TPCC chief further said that IL&FS had investments from companies based in the Philippines and it was illegal to hand over Indian data to a company outside India’s shores. This was nothing but selling the data of 70 lakh land owners to one company that had foreign investments, he argued. The person in question, Mr. Sridhar Raju, was a close associate of a Minister in the government and this explained how the whole episode was played out to take over the portal and use it for illegal transactions, he claimed.
Mr. Reddy ridiculed the claims of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on creating the Dharani portal and said the Odisha government had launched the same project in 2008 with the name E-Dharani. That portal too was handled by the Il&FS Management, he said. “However, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report had found several faults with it and suggested that it be closed.
Mr. Reddy said there were about 25 lakh transactions in Dharani so far with transactions worth about ₹50,000 crore. But the money was not coming to the government directly but going to Mr. Sridhar Raju’s company first. However, the big fraud was about the money that was not being returned to the farmers who book a slot and the registration was not done for various reasons.
Explaining a case, he said Anjaneyulu Goud of Makhtal had booked a slot for registration by paying ₹5 lakh. But registration was not done as he did not go on the scheduled day of registration. The officers concerned, when questioned, were replying that they have refunded the amount. In fact, the money was not refunded online. “Where is this money going,” he asked. The government should explain this.
