Historical Legacy Errors in Land Records and the Challenges of Digital Land Governance in Telangana: A Critical Assessment of LRUP and Dharani

Reliable land records are fundamental to tenure security, agricultural credit, welfare delivery and dispute resolution. In Telangana, persistent inaccuracies stem from historical tenure arrangements, outdated cadastral surveys, incomplete mutations, informal transactions and fragmented administrative practices. This study examines the persistence of these legacy errors through successive reforms, particularly the Land Records Updation Programme (LRUP) and the Dharani digital land-record system. Using a mixed-method approach, it draws on household surveys, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), interviews with revenue officials and government and administrative records. The findings identify ownership and land-extent discrepancies, survey-number inconsistencies, textual–spatial mismatches and unresolved customary claims as major challenges. Although LRUP and Dharani advanced the modernisation of land administration, inadequate field verification and incomplete reconciliation of historical and cadastral records limited their effectiveness in correcting inherited inaccuracies. The study proposes a Verify–Reconcile–Digitise–Update framework encompassing cadastral resurvey, integration of textual and spatial records, verification-based mutation, decentralised grievance redressal and context-specific mechanisms for Scheduled Areas. It concludes that effective digital land governance requires institutional and administrative reforms alongside technological modernisation.