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Hyderabad: For years, Section 22A of the Registration Act was something only government clerks and property lawyers thought about. Since early August this year, it has become the most feared phrase in Hyderabad’s property market.

Thousands of owners in Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Medchal-Malkajgiri and Sangareddy have gone to sell a flat or a plot, only to be turned away. Their property, they were told, is on a government list of places that cannot be registered. Sales have stopped, while banks have refused loans against these properties.

Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy apologised on August 17. The Opposition wants him to resign. The Assembly meets on September 7, and both the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised to raise the issue there.

Here is everything you want to know about Telangana’s Section 22A.

What is Section 22A?

Registration is the step where a sale is officially recorded at the sub-registrar’s office. Without it, a buyer cannot get the property in their name.

Section 22A allows the government to keep a list of properties that cannot be registered. If your land is on that list, the officer must refuse. Your ownership papers, however old and however genuine, make no difference at that counter.

The point of the rule is sensible. It exists to stop people from selling land that was never theirs. This includes government land, temple and Waqf land or plots given free to poor families.

The rule came from undivided Andhra Pradesh. A 1999 version gave the government very wide powers and was struck down in 2005 as too open-ended. A 2007 law brought it back with fixed categories. For one of them, which is land the government claims an interest in, it must first publish a formal public notice (called a gazette notification) naming the properties.

That publication step is at the heart of the present row. The rule itself is not in doubt, as a Telangana High Court bench upheld it in 2023.

Why it went wrong

In August 2025, the High Court told the government to prepare a clean, updated list for every sub-registrar. Officials put one together with more than 1 crore acre in it. It was meant to be published, opened for public objections and only then made official.

In April this year, the government began refreshing the list again, as land records shifted from the old Dharani system to the new Bhu Bharati one.

What reached the sub-registrars, the Revenue Minister admitted on August 17, was out of date. Old lists filed in court in December were passed on without being corrected, so land that had already been cleared or settled years ago was still marked as barred. Collectors, Ponguleti said, kept using old copies.

The second problem was that land is identified by survey numbers, and one survey number in Hyderabad can cover hundreds of acres shared by thousands of owners. When the government had a claim over one small patch, officials marked the whole number. A single dispute could freeze an entire colony.

How much land is involved

Everybody has been given a different number.

For instance, the updated list of officials described in October 2025 ran past 1 crore acre. Telangana has about 2.5 crore acre in all. News reports in August have put the figure at 90 lakh and 93 lakh acre. BRS leader Harish Rao said it was about 40 lakh acre.

It should be noted that nobody has published an audit. At least not yet.

Revenue Minister Ponguleti says the trouble sits mainly in four districts around Hyderabad. Medchal-Malkajgiri alone has 511 complaints pending, out of roughly 750. About 6,000 cases are before the Telangana High Court.

What the Opposition alleges

Harish Rao wanted the Revenue Minister to resign and a full public account of what happened. He said wrongly listed properties should be removed automatically, without owners having to apply and run around offices. He claimed land already exempted by earlier government orders, about 7,500 plots in Rangareddy and over 6,000 in Medchal, got swept in.

His charge is that some owners were asked to hand over a share of their land, or development rights, to get their property released. On August 23, he threatened to stall the Assembly.

The BJP’s Alleti Maheshwar Reddy called it a scam worth thousands of crores and threatened to approach the Lokayukta, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Union Minister G Kishan Reddy sought a judicial inquiry.

How the Telangana government is defending it

On August 5, Ponguleti said his government had not deliberately added a single cent of land. On August 13, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy asked people not to panic. After a review on August 18, he ordered that anyone who had already booked a registration slot be checked within two days and registered at once if the land was private.

On August 24, the Revenue Minister pushed back more. He called the Opposition campaign misleading and said 98 per cent of the registrations applied for under this provision had already been cleared. He gave examples of real fraud – 522 acre of government land diverted in Medak’s Narsapur and building on government land at Annaram. Fake orders and forged signatures were being used to register government land, he said, and police cases filed.

A committee of senior officials now meets every week to clear pending complaints.

Ponguleti’s has repeatedly pointed to Jubilee Hills Survey no 403. Only two acre out of 1,280 are actually restricted, he said, but an upload error briefly flagged the entire survey number, including the Chief Minister’s own house, before it was fixed.

What the courts have said

In a 2012 judgment, Telangana High Court judge, Justice CV Nagarjuna Reddy, laid down rules the department still has to follow. Officers cannot demand a no-objection certificate (NOC) or refuse just because a property appears on an informal list. They also cannot refuse verbally and must accept the document and give a written refusal, which the owner can appeal.

In December 2025, Justice K Lakshman added that whenever a property is put on the list, the record must show which part of the law applies and when it was added. In short, a listing that cannot explain itself can be challenged in court.

If you already own the property

Being on the list stops you from registering a sale. It does not cancel your ownership. You cannot sell, gift or mortgage and banks will not accept the property as security for a loan.

You first need to find out why you were listed. A property flagged over a court case is a different problem from one wrongly marked as government-assigned land or one carrying an old ceiling-law entry. Each has a different fix and a different office.

Call toll-free number 1800 599 4788. The District Collector has the final say on these decisions. Be careful of middlemen who offer to get your name cleared for a fee.

If you are about to buy

Check the property before you pay any advance and check again just before registration. The list is being rebuilt right now, so a clean result today is not a guarantee.

Use official sources such as the Registration and Stamps website for flats and city plots and Bhu Bharati for farm land.

It is important to remember, however, is that a whole layout can be blocked over a dispute in one small part of the survey number. So, check the parent survey number, not only your plot. A walled, approved, occupied layout can still be frozen. 

The record decides, not the site visit.