Vem Krishna Bhargav Reddy was signed on a land brief at Arpanpally village, a simple act that suddenly hummed with controversy. The record shows the deed dates back to the same year the state minister’s family aired the loudest claims of public land misuse. But eight months later, the same plot became the center of a lawsuit spearheaded by a rival party.
Manne Krishank, BRS’s mining chief, hauled a stack of papers to court. He said the 15 acres of assigned land, originally earmarked for SC/ST beneficiaries, slipped into the Reddy family’s name with a breezy wave of bureaucracy. He chalked the transfer to a signature he deemed forged. His evidence? Land passbooks, survey sheets, and a mining department notice that lines up with an illegal quarry run by “Sri Sai Krishna Granites.”
This company, they claim, was owned by Vem Vijayalakshmi, the MP’s wife. The name of the firm physically appears in the same filing as the land, and the mining licence seems to have been sold in a rush that defied standard approval. Even the election affidavits are silent on the matter, a silence that grew louder once the transfer surfaced.
Under state law, assigned lands have strict restrictions on who can own them, and transferring between private parties is nearly impossible. Yet the transfer succeeded, Krishank argues, because of an obscure loophole in the Bhu Bharati portal. That portal was designed to streamline land records, but now it’s the very tool used to grease the wheels of illegal land grabs.
Every political party in Telangana has a stake in the dispute. The charges hit a Congress MP who sits beside the Chief Minister in the Rajya Sabha, a move that ripples through the upper house’s power balance. The BRS frames this as part of a broader fight against land embezzlement, while the opposition points fingers at a highly selective investigation. Yet no criminal probe has started, the police say, and the case remains quietly stuck at the administrative level.
Meanwhile, local farmers in Arpanpally speak of empty promise and lost opportunity. The village’s residents once were set to receive new lands to boost their livelihoods, but those same plots now feed a granite quarry that crumbles houses and smokes cinder. The irony hangs thick in the air, a reminder that real estate and corruption can travel in the same currency.
So, what does this mean for governance when a business, a family, and the state’s own records intertwine? The clock ticks for tools that were built to protect the land that millions depend on.
