Telangana LRS Stages: What Pending at L1, L2, L3 and L4 Means

Log in to the Telangana LRS portal and you may find your application described like this:

Pending at L1 - IR, RE, TP, Tab Name: PROHIBITED PLOT APPLICATION PROCESS

That is not a sentence anybody wrote for a citizen to read. It is an internal queue name that leaked onto a public screen.

But it does mean something quite specific. It tells you which desk your file is on, which departments have not signed off yet, and why it has not moved. Once you can read it, you know whether you are waiting on a payment, a site visit, a signature, or something no amount of waiting will fix.

So here is the whole machine, from first principles.

Start here: what LRS is actually for

Somebody bought farmland, drew lines on it, and sold you a plot.

If they never got that subdivision approved by the competent authority, the layout is unapproved. It might have roads. It might have a compound wall and a gate and a name. None of that makes it approved.

The state’s own definition covers three situations: land subdivided into plots without permission from the competent authority, layouts given only tentative approval where plots were sold before final approval, and Gram Panchayat layouts that never got technical clearance from the Director of Town and Country Planning or the development authority.

That last one catches a lot of people. A Gram Panchayat approval on its own is not enough. Asked directly whether a layout approved by a Gram Panchayat without technical approval from DTCP or the UDA is a valid layout, the state’s answer is one word: “No.”

Living on an unapproved plot is fine until you need the state to acknowledge it. Then four things bite, and the scheme’s FAQ lists them plainly:

• No building permission will be given
• No regular water supply connections, roads, drainage or streetlights extended to the area
• No registration of such plots by sale will be permitted

That third one is the reason people care. An unregularised plot in an unapproved layout is difficult to sell, because the transaction that transfers it is the transaction that is blocked.

The Layout Regularisation Scheme, opened under G.O. Ms. No. 131 dated 31 August 2020, is the state’s offer: pay a penalty, prove the plot is not on land it should never have been on, and the layout problem against your plot goes away.

What LRS will not do, no matter how long you wait

This is worth knowing before you spend six years hoping.

It will not regularise a building. You can apply to regularise the plot. On buildings the FAQ is blunt: “At present there is no provision for regualrisation of Unauthorised bUildings.” Typos and all, that is the official position. The structure is a separate problem under a separate scheme.

It will not fix your title. Regularisation is a planning-law remedy. It does not give a seller ownership they never had, clear an encumbrance, or settle a boundary dispute.

And some plots are excluded outright:

That last row is the one that quietly disqualifies people. The scheme is only open to plot owners whose registered sale deed was executed before 26 August 2020. Buying into an unapproved layout after that date and hoping to regularise later was never an option.

How the bill is calculated

The charge is not a flat fee, and it is not arbitrary. G.O. Ms. No. 135 dated 16 September 2020 amended the original rules and set a sliding scale tied to what your plot was worth on the sub-registrar’s books as on 26 August 2020.

Two things ride on top. If the layout does not have the required 10 percent open space, pro-rata open space charges apply at 14 percent of the plot value. And the GO added a clarification worth money to you: the LRS charge “includes NALA charges also and no separate NALA charges shall be paid.”

The application itself costs ₹1,000 for an individual plot and ₹10,000 for a whole layout, paid upfront. Everything else is intimated later, after the authority computes it.

Which is why the receipt for that first ₹1,000 carries a warning most people never read:

“The receipt of Layout Regularisation (LR) charges is subject to approval of LR application and final computation of LR charges. This receipt does not give any right for Regularisation.”

The journey of a file

Now the part nobody explains. Here is what your application physically does.

Stage 0: You apply, and then you wait for a number

You file online, pay ₹1,000, and get an application number. Nothing has been assessed yet. At this point the authority knows only what you typed in.

Stage 1: Fee intimation

The authority computes what you owe using the scale above and puts it on the portal. Your status becomes fee intimated, not paid, and the file stops dead until you pay.

On the officers’ dashboard this shows up as an orange tile: applications awaiting applicant payment. Nobody is working on it. Nobody will.

This is the single largest queue in the entire scheme, and it is worth being blunt about why. Of the 9.87 lakh municipal applications we measured, 5,22,059 are sitting exactly here.

Stage 2: L1, the site visit

Once you pay, the file becomes live work and lands in the L1 queue.

L1 is not a clerk reading your form. It is a field inspection by three people from three departments, each filling in a separate checklist:

Between them they scrutinise the plot against a long exclusion list: Waqf properties, endowment and inam properties, assigned lands, ceiling lands, court disputes, evacuee properties, FTL lands, nalas, lakes, tanks, heritage buildings and Defence lands.

The L1 officer records the plot’s latitude and longitude, uploads plot images, enters the sub-registrar office code, and answers a questionnaire. Then the file auto-forwards to L2.

So when your status reads Pending at L1 - IR, RE, TP, all three are still outstanding. When it reads Pending at L1 - TP, revenue and irrigation have already cleared and only town planning is left. Fewer codes is genuine progress.

There is a detail here that is hard to read without wincing. The officer dashboard colour-codes files by urgency, and it turns a file red once verification has been pending 48 hours. The system was designed around a two-day service window. In August 2024 the state set a three-month target for completing field verification. Two years on, 2,10,142 applications are still at L1.

Stage 3: L2, the technical check

L2 sits with the town planning head of the municipality or corporation. Their job is to audit what L1 recorded and then apply the planning rules: access road width, master plan provisions, zoning, open space, land use.

The L2 officer picks the plot’s land use from the master plan or zonal development plan, then chooses one of two paths:

• Approve or reject, which sends the file to L3 with a recommendation
• Back to L1, which puts it back in the field queue for re-verification

That second option matters. A file can go backwards. If yours reappears at L1 after reaching L2, it has not been rejected, it has been sent back for better field data.

L2 can also revise the fee. If the market value or plot area recorded against your file was wrong, the officer updates it and regenerates the charge.

Stage 4: L3, the decision

L3 is the Municipal Commissioner or an equivalent authority. This is where an application is actually approved or refused.

The L3 officer sees a consolidated view of everything L1 and L2 recorded, adds remarks and any additional conditions, and commits the decision. They can also revert the file to an earlier level, revoke an approval already granted, or trigger a refund correction.

One system rule is worth knowing if you are chasing a correction: corrections are allowed only once per application. The portal warns its own officers that the change is irreversible and that they must check the mandal, village, survey number and plot number before submitting, because they will not get a second attempt.

If there is an error in your file, you get one shot at fixing it. Send the right information the first time.

Stage 5: L4, mostly for layouts

L4 is where whole-layout approvals go, handled by the Additional Collector (Local Bodies) in the districts, or the city planner or Director of Planning in GHMC and HMDA.

Individual plot owners rarely see it. Across the municipal records, just 38 applications sit at L4, and their charges run into lakhs rather than tens of thousands, which is what a layout-wide application looks like.

Where files actually get stuck

Reading the stages in order makes the process look like a conveyor belt. It is not. The jams are concentrated in very specific places.

The biggest jam is not in the process at all. Over half of all applications never got past fee intimation, because the applicant did not pay. The scheme cannot move those files and is not trying to.

The biggest jam inside the process is L1, and specifically irrigation and revenue. This is the stage where a plot gets tested against water bodies and government land, and it is where the prohibited-flag files pile up. In the municipal records, 1,23,801 applications carry a status meaning the plot is recorded as FTL or otherwise prohibited. Every one of them is at L1, none is approved, none is rejected, and no fee was ever intimated against them. There is nothing to pay and nothing to appeal.

If you are in that group, the question is not “when will the portal move” but “is the boundary correctly recorded against my survey number”, and that gets settled in the revenue and irrigation records, not in LRS. Our guide on checking FTL and buffer zones covers how those lines are drawn.

Everything above L1 is comparatively empty. L2 holds 17,952 applications, L3 holds 1,808. Getting past field verification is most of the battle.

Common pitfalls

Assuming a payment receipt means approval. It says the opposite, in print, on the receipt.

Assuming a part payment holds your place. It does not. Files that paid in full are approved at roughly 68 percent; files that left a balance, at 42 percent.

Letting an agent file on their mobile number. Every fee intimation and notice goes to the number on the application. If that is a broker from 2020, you will never see them. Check whose contact details are on your file.

Filing twice because the portal misbehaved. A duplicate application does not speed anything up and creates two records to reconcile.

Treating a “reverted” status as a rejection. It is a request for better information, and it has a route forward.

Expecting LRS to solve a title problem. It was never designed to. Layout status and title are separate checks, and you need both.

If you are stuck, here is what actually moves it

Fee intimated, not paid. Only you can move this. Log in, look at the amount, decide. A 25 percent rebate on regularisation charges is currently running to 30 November 2026 for 2020 applicants with dues outstanding, though rebate terms change, so confirm on the portal before relying on it.

Fee paid, still showing at the citizen stage. Something was asked for and never answered. Log in and read the file rather than assuming payment closed it.

Pending at L1 with all three codes. Field verification has not happened. There is no citizen action that skips it, but you can make sure the plot is findable: correct survey number, correct mandal and village, contactable phone number. A team that cannot locate or reach you cannot complete a checklist.

Pending at L1 with a prohibited or FTL tag. Stop waiting for the portal. Establish whether the boundary is correctly recorded against your survey number through the revenue and irrigation records. If it is correctly recorded, LRS was never going to regularise the plot.

Pending at L2 or L3. You are through the hard part. Keep your file clean and remember you get one correction, so make it count.

Reverted or shortfall. Find out exactly what was asked for before responding. A vague reply sends it round the loop again.

For any of these, the published support routes are the LRS helpline on 1800 425 8838 and support-lrs@telangana.gov.in, plus the webchat and WhatsApp options in the Reach Us section of the portal. The portal records which officer handled your file at each level, so a follow-up that names the stage and the date it last moved will always land better than “please check my application”.

The one-line version

LRS is a planning penalty, not a title cure. The charge scales with what your plot was worth in August 2020. Your file goes citizen, then irrigation and revenue and town planning in the field, then town planning again on the rules, then a commissioner’s signature. It can go backwards, and you get one correction.

And if it has not moved in six years, the most likely reason is the least dramatic one: a bill nobody paid, or a boundary nobody can clear.

Assetly helps property owners keep their application trail and documents in one place, and notice when the status against a property changes.