Belagavi-Raichur Expressway

Karnataka's agricultural land law changed dramatically in 2020, and that change still shapes every purchase decision along this corridor. Before 2020, Sections 79A and 79B of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, 1961 barred non-agriculturists and most companies from buying farmland at all. The 2020 amendment repealed those restrictions, opening agricultural land to any Indian citizen regardless of income or occupation. That liberalised framework remains current law today, but it is not settled policy.

Karnataka's Chief Minister publicly announced intent in August 2024 to restore Sections 79A and 79B, and as of the most recent public update, no legislation enacting that restoration had passed or received the Governor's assent. Confirm the current status of any proposed restoration of Sections 79A and 79B with a property lawyer before finalising a purchase, since a change here could affect future transactions.

The compensation dispute is not hypothetical or historical. As of an August 2025 government update, Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari specifically named the Belgaum-Hungund-Raichur stretch of NH-748A as one where farmer disputes over enhanced compensation and possession of land recorded under court-deposit survey numbers had hampered progress, alongside a separate stalled corridor elsewhere in Karnataka. Regular review meetings between central and state officials were ongoing to resolve the bottleneck. A plot inside that disputed stretch carries acquisition risk that a clean-looking RTC extract will not reveal on its own.

Even once conversion status and acquisition risk are cleared, Karnataka's DC Conversion process itself is a real cost, not a formality. Section 95 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 requires a Deputy Commissioner's conversion order before any non-agricultural construction or commercial activity, and conversion premiums vary sharply by location.

Confirm the applicable DC Conversion premium for a specific survey number in Belagavi, Bagalkot, or Raichur district directly with the local Deputy Commissioner's office, since costs near Bangalore run far higher than in these northern Karnataka districts.

The corridor's six construction packages have not all progressed at the same pace, and knowing which package a plot sits under matters as much as knowing its district.

The Hungund-Bagalkot stretch deserves the most direct caution of the three, precisely because it is the one section where a central minister has gone on record naming active disputes as the reason for delay. Land elsewhere on the corridor, particularly the Belagavi origin tied into the existing NH-48 network, carries a cleaner near-term case simply because it connects into infrastructure that already functions today.

Raichur's position as the corridor's eastern gateway toward Hyderabad gives it long-term appeal, but that appeal depends on packages further west actually clearing their compensation disputes first, since a corridor is only as fast as its slowest package.