Assigned Land and the 22-A Prohibited List: Land You Cannot Buy

Every year we meet buyers who found a parcel at a price that looked too good, paid an advance, and only then discovered that the survey number sits on the 22-A prohibited properties list in Telangana, or that the "patta" the seller showed them is actually an assignment patta that the law does not allow anyone to sell. Assigned land, Bhoodan land, temple endowment land, wakf property and government land together make up a large share of the rural acreage around Hyderabad, and none of it can be bought by a private buyer through an ordinary sale deed. This guide explains what each category is, how the Section 22-A list works, how to search it yourself, how to read the warning signs in revenue records, and what actually happens if you buy prohibited land by mistake. It is written from the files we have worked on in Rangareddy, Medchal-Malkajgiri, Sangareddy and Vikarabad, and it reflects the position as of October 2026.

We are property advisors, not advocates. The framework below is accurate as a starting point, but every prohibited-land question turns on its own documents, and a final opinion should come from a property lawyer who has read the full file.

Who this guide is for

This guide is for resident buyers looking at agricultural land, farm plots or village-edge parcels anywhere in Telangana, and for families who already own land and have found a "prohibited" flag against it on the records portal. It is also useful for NRIs who have inherited farm land and want to understand why a sale is stuck. If you are only buying an apartment in a RERA-registered project, the builder's lawyer should have dealt with these issues, but it is still worth reading the section on how to search the list.

Why prohibited land matters more around Hyderabad than almost anywhere else

Between the 1950s and the 2000s, successive governments in the Hyderabad region distributed large extents of government land to landless families, mostly Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Backward Class households, for cultivation. At the same time, the Bhoodan movement, which began in Pochampally in Nalgonda in 1951, brought in donated land that was redistributed to the landless. Temples and dargahs had held endowment and wakf lands for centuries. When Hyderabad expanded beyond the Outer Ring Road, these parcels suddenly became worth crores per acre, and the pressure to sell them, legally or otherwise, became intense.

The result is that in many villages of Shamirpet, Keesara, Kandukur, Maheshwaram, Ibrahimpatnam and Moinabad mandals, a single survey number can contain private patta land, assigned land and government land side by side, distinguished only by a sub-division suffix. A buyer who checks only the seller's passbook can easily miss the difference. The price gap is also what makes the trap work: prohibited land is often offered at 30% to 60% below the going rate for clean patta land in the same village, with a story about a family emergency or a quick sale.

What assigned land and the 22-A list actually are

Assigned land and the POT Act

Assigned land is government land granted to a landless poor person for cultivation, or as a house site, subject to the condition that it will not be transferred. In Telangana, the governing law is the Telangana (originally Andhra Pradesh) Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act, 1977, universally called the POT Act. Its core rules are simple:

• No person can transfer assigned land, and no person can acquire it, by sale, gift, lease, mortgage or exchange. The prohibition binds the original assignee and anyone claiming through them.
• Any transfer in contravention of the Act is null and void. It is not merely voidable; it conveys nothing.
• The government, acting through the revenue officers, can resume land that has been transferred in contravention, take it back and re-assign it to an eligible landless person.
• Assigned land can pass by inheritance to the assignee's legal heirs, who hold it on the same restricted terms. A sale by the heirs is just as void as a sale by the original assignee.
• Mortgage is generally permitted only to the government or to banks and co-operative societies for agricultural loans.

In revenue language you will see assigned land described as DKT patta or darkhast patta (from the application, or darkhast, made for assignment), D-form patta, lawani patta, or as land recorded in the assignment register. Older pahanis may show the land classification as "Sarkari" with an assignee's name in the cultivator column. The word "patta" in these phrases misleads many buyers: an assignment patta is a conditional grant, not the full ownership a regular pattadar holds.

Periodically there are announcements, in Telangana and in neighbouring states, about granting full ownership rights to assignees after a long period of cultivation. As of October 2026, assigned agricultural land in Telangana remains non-transferable except by inheritance. Do not buy on the strength of a press report or a promise that "the government is about to regularise"; buy only when a notified change in the law actually covers the specific parcel.

Section 22-A of the Registration Act

The POT Act and the other laws described here say that certain land cannot be transferred. Section 22-A of the Registration Act, 1908, as amended for the state, is the mechanism that stops such documents being registered. It directs registering officers to refuse registration of the following classes of documents:

1. Transfers of property by persons whose transfer is prohibited by any law, which covers assigned land under the POT Act and similar statutory bars.
2. Agreements of sale or conveyances relating to property belonging to the State or Central Government or to local authorities.
3. Documents relating to property of religious and charitable endowments, without the sanction required by the endowments law.
4. Documents relating to wakf property, without the sanction required by the wakf law.
5. Any other documents or class of properties that the state government notifies in the public interest.

To make this workable, the government compiles lists of such properties by survey number and sends them to every registering officer. This is the "prohibited properties list" or "22-A list". When a document is presented, the registering officer, whether the Sub-Registrar or the Tahsildar acting as joint sub-registrar for agricultural land, checks the survey number against the list. If it matches, registration is refused.

Two points are often misunderstood. First, the list is a registration filter, not a title document: the absence of a survey number from the list does not prove that land is free of assignment, and its presence does not by itself prove that land is government property. Second, the list has been criticised, including in High Court litigation, for sweeping in whole survey numbers when only a part was assigned or government land. That is why genuinely private land can be "stuck" on the list, a problem we cover below.

Bhoodan land

Land donated during the Bhoodan movement was vested in the Bhoodan board under the state's Bhoodan and Gramdan Act and granted to landless people for cultivation. Grantees hold heritable but non-transferable rights. Bhoodan land cannot be sold by the grantee or their heirs, and purchases of such land are void. After the state's Bhoodan board was dissolved, its records and functions came under the revenue administration, which makes record tracing slower. Bhoodan grants can be hard to spot because some donors' names remain in older records, so a 1954-55 khasra pahani or the Bhoodan register entry is often what reveals the history.

Endowment land

Temples and Hindu religious and charitable institutions own substantial agricultural land in Telangana, governed by the Telangana Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Act, 1987. Endowment land cannot be sold, mortgaged or leased beyond permitted terms without the prior sanction required under that Act, which is given only in limited circumstances and usually through a public process. A farmer who has cultivated temple land for three generations is typically a tenant or lessee, not an owner, and cannot sell. Former inam land, where an inam was granted for service to a temple, needs particular care because the post-abolition entitlement may or may not have been settled in the cultivator's favour.

Wakf land

Property dedicated as wakf is managed under the Waqf Act, 1995, which was substantially amended in 2025 and renamed; parts of the amendment have been litigated in the Supreme Court. For a buyer the practical rule has not changed: wakf property is inalienable, a sale or gift without the sanction required under the Act is void, and the Telangana State Waqf Board maintains its own register of wakf properties. Large extents in and around Hyderabad have been notified as wakf, and disputes over whether particular survey numbers are wakf have run for decades. If the Waqf Board's register or the prohibited list shows a claim, treat it as a stop sign until a lawyer has read the notification and any litigation.

Government, ceiling and other notified land

The remaining categories cover government land (poramboke, kancha, sikham and similar classifications), land declared surplus under the Telangana Land Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings) Act, 1973, surplus land from the old urban land ceiling regime, forest land, land acquired for a public project, and properties attached by courts or tax authorities. Some of these appear on the 22-A list under the public-interest notification power, and some are simply recorded as government land in the revenue records. Each requires a different check, but the outcome for a buyer is the same: no private seller can give you good title.

How the prohibited list works in practice

For agricultural land, the record of rights is now Bhu Bharati, which replaced Dharani in 2025; the old address, dharani.telangana.gov.in, redirects to it. The records portal shows, for a survey number, the land type, extent, pattadar names and whether the parcel is flagged as prohibited, assigned, government or under litigation. For converted land, plots and urban property, the registration department's portal at registration.telangana.gov.in has a prohibited property search by district, mandal, village and survey number, alongside the encumbrance certificate search.

The process when a sale is attempted runs like this:

1. The buyer or seller books a slot. For agricultural land, the slot is booked through the land records portal for the mandal Tahsildar; for non-agricultural property, through the registration portal for the Sub-Registrar.
2. The system checks the survey number against the prohibited list and the record of rights. If the parcel is flagged, the slot usually cannot be booked at all.
3. If the flag covers the whole survey number but the seller's sub-division is private, the seller must first get the record corrected or the parcel delisted. The registering officer has no discretion to ignore the list.
4. If a document somehow gets registered despite a bar, which happened in the past through wrong survey numbers, mismatched sub-divisions or manual errors, registration does not cure the defect. The transfer remains void under the substantive law, and the revenue authorities can still resume the land.

Removal from the list is a quasi-judicial process. For revenue categories, the owner applies to the District Collector, through the records portal's application module or at the Collectorate, with title documents, the khasra pahani and subsequent pahanis, the assignment or Bhoodan registers showing the land was never granted, and a survey report where the dispute is about extent. The Collector calls for reports from the Tahsildar and the survey department and passes an order. Endowment and wakf entries need clearance from those departments. Where the authorities do not act, owners approach the High Court.

Step-by-step: checking a survey number before you pay an advance

This is the sequence we run on every agricultural or village-edge parcel before a client pays any advance. Costs are indicative, as of October 2026, and depend on how many survey numbers are involved and how far back the records must be traced.

Step	What we check	Typical time	Indicative cost
1. Portal check	Record of rights on Bhu Bharati: land type, extent, pattadar, prohibited or litigation flag; IGRS prohibited property search	Same day	Nil (our time)
2. Khasra pahani and sethwar	1954-55 khasra pahani and settlement register to see the original classification of the survey number: patta, sarkari, inam, Bhoodan	3–10 days	₹2,000 – ₹8,000 for certified copies and retrieval
3. Pahanis over the years	Pahani or adangal entries for each decade to see who cultivated the land and under what classification	5–10 days	₹2,000 – ₹6,000
4. Assignment and Bhoodan registers	Mandal assignment register and Bhoodan records for the survey number and every sub-division	1–3 weeks	₹3,000 – ₹10,000, mainly follow-up
5. Endowment and wakf registers	Endowments department records and the Waqf Board register where the village has a temple or dargah connection	1–3 weeks	₹3,000 – ₹10,000
6. Survey report	Licensed surveyor fixes the parcel on the village map and confirms which sub-division you are actually standing on	1–2 weeks	₹15,000 – ₹45,000 depending on extent
7. Legal opinion	Advocate reads the full chain, revenue records and searches and gives a written title opinion	1–2 weeks	₹15,000 – ₹60,000 depending on complexity

The whole exercise usually takes three to six weeks. That is why we advise clients never to sign an agreement with a large non-refundable advance on a parcel that has not gone through at least steps one to three. A small token amount, refundable if the land turns out to be prohibited, is the most you should put down at the start. For the full due-diligence sequence, see our guide on how to buy agricultural land in Telangana step by step, and for the deed-by-deed reading of the chain, our guide to link documents and the title chain.

Red flags in the documents

Prohibited land rarely announces itself. These are the signals that make us slow down:

• The seller's oldest document is a government grant. A certificate of assignment, a D-form patta, a lawani patta or a proceedings copy from the Tahsildar is a grant, and it almost always carries a non-alienation condition.
• The khasra pahani shows "Sarkari", "poramboke" or "kancha". If the 1954-55 classification is government land and there is no recorded patta grant in between, private ownership needs a very clear explanation.
• Sub-division suffixes that do not match. The seller's passbook shows survey 214/A, the agreement shows "214", and the boundaries described would place you in 214/AA. Different sub-divisions of the same number can have completely different status.
• Unregistered sales in the chain. A sada bainama or a GPA from an assignee family is a classic route by which assigned land was "sold" in the past. These documents do not convey title even when the land is clean, and they are a strong hint when it is not.
• Possession for decades but no mutation. A seller who says the family has cultivated the land since the 1980s but the passbook is in another family's name may be describing tenancy, encroachment on government land or a void purchase from assignees.
• A temple, dargah or mosque next door. Not a defect in itself, but a prompt to check the endowment and wakf registers.
• A flag that "will be removed next month". If the seller asks you to pay now because delisting is "almost done", ask to see the application, its acknowledgement and the Collector's file status. Pay after the order, not before.

Worked example: a Shamirpet parcel with a split survey number

A client, a resident software engineer, shortlisted three acres in a village a few kilometres beyond the ORR on the Shamirpet side. Interior patta land there trades at roughly ₹1.5 crore to ₹3 crore per acre as of October 2026; this parcel was offered at ₹1.1 crore per acre, or ₹3.3 crore for the whole, with a request for a ₹25 lakh advance within a week.

On the portal, the seller's passbook showed 3 acres in survey 214/A with no prohibited flag. The trouble began at step two. The khasra pahani showed survey 214 as 9 acres 20 guntas of sarkari land. The assignment register showed that in 1978, 6 acres 20 guntas had been assigned to four landless families, and 3 acres had been granted on full patta to a fifth family in the same year after an enquiry into long cultivation. That fifth family was our seller's grandfather, so 214/A looked clean.

The licensed surveyor's report changed the picture. The boundary stones the seller had pointed out enclosed a block that overlapped about 1 acre 10 guntas of 214/AA, one of the assigned sub-divisions. The family had cultivated that strip for years and believed it was theirs. The genuine 214/A was 3 acres, but shifted toward the village road, with a narrower frontage than the land shown on the visit.

The outcome:

• The client did not pay the ₹25 lakh advance. Had he done so on the strength of the visit, around 40% of the land he thought he was buying would have been assigned land that no registration could have transferred.
• Negotiation moved to the correct 3 acres of 214/A as surveyed. Because the frontage was narrower, the price was renegotiated to ₹1.05 crore per acre, ₹3.15 crore in all.
• The agreement required the seller to vacate and fence the strip of 214/AA before registration, with the survey sketch annexed to the sale deed.
• Registration at the Shamirpet Tahsildar office cost approximately 7.5% of the applicable value in stamp duty, transfer duty and registration fee, verified on the day. TDS under Section 194-IA did not apply because the land was rural agricultural land outside the notified municipal distance, which the client's CA confirmed.

Total time from first visit to registration was eight weeks, of which five were records and survey. For the area context, see our page on agriculture and farm land in Shamirpet.

Worked example: private land wrongly stuck on the list

The opposite problem is just as common. A family in a Kandukur mandal village owned 4 acres 20 guntas of inherited patta land in a survey number of 18 acres. Around 12 acres of that number had been acquired years earlier for a government purpose, and when the prohibited list was compiled, the entire survey number was entered. The family's buyer, offering around ₹1.2 crore per acre, could not book a slot.

The family applied to the District Collector with the 1954-55 khasra pahani showing their ancestor as pattadar, the acquisition award showing exactly which sub-divisions had been acquired, every subsequent pahani, the inheritance mutation and a survey sketch. The Tahsildar's report and the survey department's verification took about four months, and the Collector's order deleting the family's sub-division from the list came in the sixth month. The buyer had agreed to a structure where 10% of the price was paid into an escrow with the advocate, released on the delisting order, and the balance on registration. Neither side was exposed while the file moved.

The lesson for sellers is to clear the flag before marketing the land. The lesson for buyers is that a wrongly listed parcel can be a fair purchase, but only with the payment tied to the order. See our page on farm land in Kandukur for how values there are shaped by the Future City plans.

What happens if you buy prohibited land by mistake

This is the question families ask after the fact, and the answers are uncomfortable.

• Your document conveys nothing. A transfer of assigned, Bhoodan, endowment or wakf land in breach of the governing law is void. Even if a deed was registered, it does not make you the owner.
• Mutation will be refused or reversed. The revenue authorities will not record you as pattadar, and if an entry was made in error it can be cancelled.
• The government can resume the land. Under the POT Act, the revenue officers can take back assigned land transferred in breach and re-assign it. Structures you built are not protected, and no compensation is owed to a void purchaser.
• Your remedy is against the seller. You can sue the seller to recover the price, relying on the seller's covenant of title under the Transfer of Property Act and the general law on recovering money paid under a void agreement. Where the seller knowingly misrepresented the land, a criminal complaint for cheating may also lie. In practice, recovering money from a family of former assignees, or from an intermediary who has vanished, is slow and often incomplete.
• Bank finance and resale are blocked. No bank will lend on the land, and no informed buyer will buy it from you.
• Time does not cure it. Long possession of assigned or government land does not ripen into title against the government in the way it might against a private owner.

If you are already in this position, stop further payments, collect every document and receipt, and take a lawyer's advice before speaking to the seller. Sometimes the problem is narrower than it first appears, for example where only one sub-division is affected, and part of the transaction can be rescued.

Mistakes we see in practice, and the fix for each

1. Relying on the passbook alone. The passbook reflects the current record, not the history. Fix: always trace back to the 1954-55 khasra pahani and check the assignment register.
2. Checking the main survey number but not the sub-division. Fix: get the exact sub-division in writing, and have a surveyor confirm on the ground that the land you are shown is that sub-division.
3. Accepting "regularisation is coming". Fix: price and pay for the law as it stands today. If rights are granted later, the seller can sell then.
4. Paying a large advance under time pressure. Fix: a token, refundable advance until records are verified, and the balance tied to milestones in a written agreement.
5. Buying from heirs of an assignee because "the original assignee has died". Fix: understand that heirs inherit the same non-transferable rights. Death does not lift the bar.
6. Treating a GPA or sada bainama chain as normal. Fix: insist on registered conveyances throughout. An unregistered link is a defect on clean land and a red flag on doubtful land.
7. Ignoring endowment and wakf checks in villages with old institutions. Fix: check the registers whenever the village has an old temple, dargah or inam history, even if the portal shows nothing.
8. Using a resident relative's name to buy for an NRI. This adds FEMA and benami risk on top of title risk. NRIs and OCIs cannot buy or receive as a gift any agricultural land, farm plot or farmhouse; see our guide on NRI agriculture land rules in Telangana.

How NRR Estates handles prohibited-land risk for clients

Every agricultural parcel we put in front of a client goes through a records screen before the client visits. We check the record of rights and the prohibited list for the survey number and every adjoining sub-division, pull the khasra pahani and the assignment position where it is available, and flag anything that looks like government, assigned, Bhoodan, endowment or wakf history. Parcels that fail are not shown.

When a client wants to proceed, we coordinate the surveyor and the advocate, draft the agreement so that advances are refundable until the records are cleared, and structure escrow arrangements where delisting is pending. We explain the revenue entries in plain language so that the client understands what they are buying, and we stay with the file through registration at the Tahsildar office and the mutation that follows. Our fees are disclosed before any commitment.

Where a family already owns land that is wrongly listed, we can help assemble the delisting file and work with their advocate, and we tell them honestly when the land genuinely is assigned or government land and cannot be sold. For the wider records system, see our guide to Dharani and Bhu Bharati land records.

Frequently asked questions about assigned and prohibited land

What is assigned land in Telangana?

Assigned land is government land granted to landless poor families for cultivation or as a house site, on condition that it is not transferred. It is governed by the Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act, 1977, known as the POT Act. Revenue records describe it as DKT patta, darkhast patta, D-form patta or lawani patta. The assignee and their heirs can cultivate and inherit it, but cannot sell, gift, lease or mortgage it to private parties. Any transfer is void and the government can resume the land and re-assign it to an eligible family.

Can I buy assigned land from the assignee's legal heirs?

No. Assigned land passes to the assignee's legal heirs by inheritance, but the heirs hold it on exactly the same restricted terms. A sale deed, agreement, GPA or sada bainama executed by the heirs is as void as one executed by the original assignee. The death of the assignee does not lift the prohibition. As of October 2026, Telangana has not made assigned agricultural land freely transferable, so do not pay for such land on the promise that regularisation or full ownership rights are coming soon.

What is the 22-A prohibited properties list?

Section 22-A of the Registration Act, as amended for the state, directs registering officers to refuse registration of documents relating to land whose transfer is barred by law, government and local body land, endowment and wakf property without required sanction, and other properties notified in the public interest. The government sends survey-number lists of such properties to Sub-Registrars and Tahsildars. If a survey number is on the list, a slot usually cannot be booked and the document will not be registered until the entry is removed.

How do I check if land is on the prohibited list in Telangana?

For agricultural land, search the survey number on the Bhu Bharati land records portal, which the old Dharani address now redirects to, and look at the land type and any prohibited, assigned, government or litigation flag. For converted land and plots, use the prohibited property search on the registration department's portal by district, mandal, village and survey number. Check every sub-division, not just the main number. A clean result is necessary but not sufficient; the khasra pahani and assignment register still need checking.

My private patta land is wrongly shown as prohibited. What can I do?

Apply to the District Collector for deletion of your sub-division from the prohibited list, through the land records portal's application module or at the Collectorate. Attach the 1954-55 khasra pahani, later pahanis, your title deeds and mutation orders, any acquisition award or assignment records showing which part of the survey number was affected, and a survey sketch. The Collector calls for Tahsildar and survey reports and passes an order, typically in three to six months. If the authorities do not act, owners approach the High Court.

Can I buy temple or endowment land in Telangana?

Not through an ordinary private sale. Land belonging to Hindu religious and charitable institutions is governed by the Telangana Endowments Act, 1987, and cannot be sold, mortgaged or leased beyond permitted terms without the prior sanction required by that law, which is given only in limited cases, usually through a public process. A farmer who has cultivated temple land for generations is normally a tenant or lessee and has no right to sell. Former inam lands need careful legal reading because entitlements after abolition vary.

What happens if I have already bought prohibited land?

The transfer is void, so the deed does not make you the owner even if it was registered. Mutation will be refused or cancelled, banks will not lend, and the government can resume assigned or government land without compensating you. Your remedy is against the seller, by a civil suit to recover the price and, where there was deliberate misrepresentation, a criminal complaint. Stop further payments, gather every document and receipt, and take a property lawyer's advice before approaching the seller, because sometimes only part of the land is affected.

Can NRIs buy assigned or prohibited agricultural land through a relative?

No, on two counts. Prohibited land cannot be bought by anyone, resident or not. Separately, under FEMA, NRIs and OCI cardholders cannot purchase or receive as a gift any agricultural land, plantation property or farmhouse in India; they can only inherit it. Buying through a resident relative with NRI money adds benami and FEMA exposure on top of a void title. NRIs who want land exposure should look at NALA-converted plots in HMDA or DTCP approved layouts or villas instead.