Procedure note · Registration

Section 22A prohibited property lists, and sada bainama regularisation

How a property comes to be entered in a list of properties in respect of which registration is prohibited, what the registering officer must then do, how a wrong entry is questioned, and what Part B entries and sada bainama regularisation involve.

1. What a section 22A listing is

Section 22A of the Registration Act, 1908, as it applies in this State by virtue of the State amendment, identifies categories of property in respect of which a document is not to be registered, and empowers the Government to notify property falling within them. They are broadly the categories in which the public interest is direct: property of the Government, of a local authority or of a statutory body; property of a religious or charitable endowment or of a wakf; assigned land and land held subject to a statutory restriction on alienation; property subject to an attachment or a prohibitory order; and such other property as the Government notifies.

The notified properties are compiled into lists maintained by the Registration and Stamps Department, held against the survey number and village, and available to the registering officer at the point of registration — commonly called the “22A lists” or the prohibited property lists.

2. The effect on registration

Where a property is entered in the list, the registering officer is bound to refuse to register a document relating to it. The refusal is a ministerial act: the officer applies the notification and does not adjudicate whether the property truly falls within the notified category. That is the practical difficulty with a wrong entry — the point cannot be argued at the counter, because the officer has no power to decide it.

A refusal is required to be recorded, and the person presenting the document is entitled to know the ground. That endorsement identifies the entry and the department at whose instance it was made, and every later step depends on both.

3. Where an entry comes from

Entries are ordinarily made on a requisition from the department concerned with the land — revenue, endowments, wakf, forest, irrigation or a local body. Errors therefore usually originate upstream and are reproduced downstream: a survey number listed in whole when only a part was ever government land, or a property left on the list after the proceeding that justified it was set aside.

4. Questioning a wrong entry

The route depends on the origin of the entry. In the ordinary course the steps are these.

1. Establish the entry. Obtain the written endorsement of refusal and the extract showing the property as listed, with the survey number and the notification relied upon.
2. Assemble the record. The chain of registered documents, the record-of-rights and earlier pahani entries, the encumbrance certificate, the survey and subdivision record, and any order or decree bearing on the status of the land.
3. Represent to the requisitioning department — in most cases the revenue authorities, through the Tahsildar, the Revenue Divisional Officer and the District Collector — seeking deletion of the entry or its correction to the extent actually affected, and to the Registration and Stamps Department for the consequential amendment of the list.
4. Take the statutory remedy where the underlying order is one against which the statute provides an appeal or a revision.
5. Question the listing in the writ jurisdiction where the representation is not decided, or where the inclusion is assailed as being without authority, as covering property outside the notified categories, or as made without notice. An entry preventing a person from dealing with property affects a civil right, and the courts have accordingly required the authorities to act on material and to hear the person affected. The rule requiring a statutory remedy to be exhausted first applies: see the note on the writ jurisdiction of the High Court for the State of Telangana.

Where the real question is not the listing but the ownership of the land, the dispute belongs before a civil court, and deletion of the entry follows the decree rather than anticipating it.

5. Part B disputed lands

A related but distinct obstacle is an entry in Part B of the land record. When the record was digitised, holdings in which the entry was incomplete or contested were placed in a separate part of the register — a mismatch between the registered document and the pahani, an unrecorded succession, a pending proceeding, an uncarried subdivision, or land affected by a prohibitory listing. The extent placed in that category has been reported at roughly 18 lakh acres across the State.

A Part B holding is recorded but not confirmed, and cannot in practice be transacted until the defect is resolved. Resolution is a revenue matter: an application to the Tahsildar or the Revenue Divisional Officer, with the appeal and revision described in the note on record of rights corrections under the Bhu Bharati Act, 2025. A Part B entry and a 22A listing may both affect the same property and are cleared separately.

6. Sada bainama regularisation

A sada bainama is a sale of land recorded on plain paper, unregistered and unstamped. Such transactions were once common in the villages of the region, particularly for agricultural land. Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908 requires an instrument transferring an interest in immovable property of the prescribed value to be registered, and section 49 denies an unregistered instrument effect as a transfer. The purchaser therefore has possession and a writing, but no registered title and no entry in the record of rights.

The State has from time to time provided a route by which such transactions may be regularised. Applications were invited under the record-of-rights legislation then in force, and a large number remained undisposed when that legislation was replaced; the Act of 2025 makes provision for their disposal. Regularisation is not automatic. It is subject to the conditions the scheme in force imposes — as to the nature and classification of the land, an upper limit on the extent, a cut-off date, proof of continuous possession, and the prescribed fee. Assigned land, Government or endowment land, and land under a prohibitory listing are ordinarily outside any such scheme.

The application is made to the revenue authorities, notice issues to persons likely to be affected, the village records and the possession are verified, and an order follows; where it is allowed the record of rights is amended. The window, form, fee and cut-off applicable at any time are fixed by the notification then in force.

7. Before a purchase

Most of the difficulty described above is found before money changes hands rather than after, by checking the prohibited property list against the survey number and village, checking whether the holding sits in Part B, taking an encumbrance certificate, and examining the chain of registered documents against the record of rights.

Related

Conveyancing, registration and stamp duty — areas of practice