Digitisation of urban land records to be rolled out soon, 1st phase to cover over 100 cities

Cities with population of less than 2 lakh to be taken up under the project, likely to be launched by end of week. Centre to make centralised portal for uploading land records data.

Representative image | PxHere

New Delhi: Over 100 cities, each with a population ranging between 50,000 and two lakh, will be considered under the first phase of the Narendra Modi government’s initiative to digitise urban land records, ThePrint has learnt.

The Centre has allocated Rs 5,000 crore for the first phase and it is expected to be completed by next year end, senior officials with the Department of Land Resources under the Union Ministry of Rural Development told ThePrint. The department will spearhead the implementation of the scheme in urban areas.

The digitisation scheme for urban land records was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget 2024-25 speech. The Centre decided to announce this scheme for urban areas because of the success of two crucial central government schemes for digitisation of land records in rural areas. 

These are the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) (launched in 2008) and the Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (SVAMITVA) scheme (launched in 2020), which are meant to modernise and digitise land records in villages and mapping rural inhabited areas using drone technology to provide legal ownership cards, respectively. 

“We will issue the sanction orders by the end of this week for the rollout of the scheme. To ensure uniformity in data collection and procedure for the digitisation of land records across all states, we will issue a detailed Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) soon,” a senior official with the rural development ministry told ThePrint.

States must identify which cities they plan to carry out the exercise in and will have to put together a team comprising revenue officials and private players for drone management and ground-truthing.

“Once we issue the sanction orders, states can invite bids for hiring firms for drone flying and other activities. We are planning to take up cities with a population of less than two lakh, as we want to complete the entire exercise within a year’s time. This will help us identify the possible challenges in streamlining land records in urban areas,” the senior official said.

To ensure swift implementation of the scheme, the land resources department is planning to develop a portal for states to upload the land record details in a standardised format. 

“The biggest challenge in states is the acute shortage of staff. For this scheme, they will have to hire additional manpower. We don’t want to burden states with the task of developing the portal for the scheme. To ensure uniformity, the Centre will develop the portal, which states can use to upload maps and data,” the official said.

States will have to submit the proposals for the cities to be covered under the scheme. 

“To begin with, we plan to take up around 100 cities. The plan is to sanction more cities in states which have adequate manpower to carry out such surveys in a time-bound manner. A final decision is yet to be taken on the number of cities per state,” the official said.

Mapping land-coordinates and ownership

The biggest challenge, senior officials in the ministry told ThePrint, is that in most states, the revenue records of urban areas, especially peri-urban areas, are not maintained well. Over the years, a lot of unplanned development has taken place in cities.

However, under the scheme, states will only map the land parcels in urban areas and record their development details.

For instance, if there is unauthorised construction or an aggregation of slums on government-owned land, land records will not reflect the type of development in them. “The land records will reflect coordinates of the land along with details of the government agencies which own it. It will not mention whether there is a slum cluster on it,” another senior official in the ministry told ThePrint.

To avail the central government incentive for digitising land records, states will have to complete aerial and field surveys and ground-truthing using rovers to demarcate the boundaries of each land parcel along with property ownership details, the official said.

The states will also have to prepare GIS-ready land parcel maps along with land property details.

“The final register of maps and land records will be prepared after resolving all disputes and claims. Once the survey is done, a team will individually visit each land parcel to verify the land ownership. A rover (a GPS receiver with data-collecting and transmitting capability) will be used to validate the boundaries. With the use of drones, we can get aerial images of land parcels to prepare the map with greater accuracy and better resolution,” the official said.

(Edited by Radifah Kabir)