Circular provides various guidelines for dealing with the Natham Land.

In respect of Natham Land, the Additional Chief Secretary / Commissioner of Land Administration issued a Circular in reference No.K3/14710/2015 dated 07.08.2015. The Circular provides various guidelines for dealing with the Natham Land. In para 2 of the said circular, it has been explicitly stated that the vacant lands available in Natham shall be recorded as "Vacant Site" and can be assigned to the weaker sections of the rural population. One of the purposes of the Scheme is to identify vacant lands and preserve them for the use of future public purposes. Public properties such as temple, school buildings etc., will be separately distinguished and this will be useful for administrative and various development activities.

25. Para 5 of the circular reads as under:-

"5. As far as Natham lands are concerned, though they are clearly government lands, the titular rights of the people enjoying the same as house site cannot be denied. Moreover as a matter of practice Natham lands are being registered by the registering authorities of registration department for long time. The said title should be followed by enjoyment. While sending proposals the District Revenue Officers should ensure that the "Vacant Site" is under the enjoyment of the claimant along with clear documentary evidence to prove the title. Since the Natham settlement scheme was completed in the year 1996, the parent documents relied on by the claimants must have been registered before the year 1966 i.e thirty years prior to 1996. It is pertinent to mentioned that as the land value in the State has been soaring many times, there are possibilities of creating rights in the "Natham Vacant Site" by newly registering documents by the persons who have no title or enjoyment. Hence unregistered documents or documents registered after 1996 cannot be used to claim patta under this scheme. Another important fact to be verified is that the registered documents relate to the land for which they are sending proposals and the boundaries are correctly tallied without matching the boundaries, it is not posssible to correlate these documents to the vacant site being cleared as "Natham" sites where not fully subdivided earlier under the Natham Settlement Scheme, patta was issued on the basis of enjoyment and the rules of darkast were not applied except for fixing the ceiling of 35 cents."

26. Para 6 of the Circular prescribes the procedures to be followed as under:-

"6. In view of the above discussion, the following criteria shall be adopted to consider the proposals received from the District Revenue Officers.

A. In para 5 of the notification of the Natham Settlement Scheme, it has been stated that in cases where no assignment order has been issued by the Revenue Department, the Special Tahsildar will decide the ownership of the property on the basis of enjoyment for 30 years prior to the date of publication of the notification in T.N.G.G. The notification was issued on 14.10.1988 and the scheme was completed in the most parts of the State in the year 1996. Hence, in the proposals received from the District Revenue Officers now, 30 years of continuous enjoyment may be counted from the year 1966.