New Delhi: After modernising the land and property record systems in rural areas, the Narendra Modi government is now planning an initiative to create geo-spatially enabled land and property ownership records in urban areas to bring transparency in land transactions, ThePrint has learnt.
The rural development ministry’s Department of Land Resources (DoLR), which is responsible for land-related matters, is planning a pilot project in around nine states to understand the challenges before finalising the scheme, said a senior ministry official.
This comes after the successful implementation of two crucial central government schemes — the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) and the Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (SVAMITVA) scheme — to modernise land records in rural areas for land parcels and residential areas respectively.
The new initiative is in line with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) promise in its election manifesto to “undertake the creation of the Digital Urban Land Record System”. After taking charge as rural development minister earlier this month, Shivraj Singh Chouhan had asked officials to start work on the implementation of promises made by the BJP in its manifesto.
The government has been exploring ways to address the complex issue of urban land records since last year. In June last year, NITI Aayog, the government’s apex policy think tank, had got the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and the Ministry of Rural Development — which is implementing the DILRMP — together hold a consultation meeting with states and Union territories to explore possible solutions to streamline urban land records.
The matter was also discussed during a meeting of chief secretaries chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2023.
For the pilot project in urban areas, the DoLR is looking at various models adopted by states such as Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra among others, which have good urban land record systems in place, said another senior rural development ministry official.
Senior officials say that land ownership records in most cities are not updated despite frequent land and property transactions. While people get property transactions registered when they take place, the change is not reflected in the revenue or land records because mutation — a process to change the land title after every sale and purchase — is not mandatory, say land rights experts.
The rural development ministry is planning to come up with a scheme under which each land parcel in a city is mapped with details of landowners.
“The idea is to have a single property card issued to property owners which will have land-related details. In most cities, the land records have not been updated. We plan to create geo-spatially enabled land ownership records. In this, the boundaries of each plot will be marked through a survey using drones or satellite images. The city administration will get ground surveys done to identify the owners based on the documents provided by them,” said a senior ministry official.
For instance, if there are three flats on a piece of land, then the boundary of the plot will be marked through the aerial survey and the names of the three flat owners will be entered in the land records with property details after the ground survey, said an official.
The official added, “We are in the process of working out the details of the pilot project. We are studying the land record system of some states that have done good work. We plan to do the pilot project in eight-nine states.”
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‘Most cities don’t have updated land records’
Unlike rural areas, land and property record systems in most cities, including Delhi, are not updated due to several reasons such as manpower shortages, a multiplicity of authorities and areas frequently changing jurisdiction, among others.
In a policy brief titled ‘Urban land and property record systems in India: The case and agenda for reform’ last year, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), an educational and research institution, highlighted the reasons for gaps in urban land record systems.
“Four broad types of urban land and property records exist in Indian cities. These are broadly distinguished based on their format, custodian agency and status,” read the policy brief authored by Deepika Jha, Manish Dubey and Amlanjyoti Goswami.
The four types are: when the Record of Rights (the document that has details of the land parcel along with ownership details) is either missing or not updated; when the RoR is maintained in a rural format and is unable to capture urban characteristics such as land being highly partitioned and having a specific use prescribed by the master plan; when the RoR is maintained in an urban format; and separate records maintained by multiple institutions other than the revenue department, such as corporations, industrial development authorities and housing boards.
According to the policy brief, the land records in some states have not been updated after the rural areas were declared urbanised. “In some states, ROR is absent or not upd after areas are declared urbanised since revenue departments, who act as custodians for rural land records, view the urban as a municipal or development authority concern,” the policy brief said.
The authors have cited the case of Delhi where the Delhi government’s revenue department “ceases to maintain land records for villages once they are formally brought into the urban fold”.
The other challenge relates to issues such as vertical development, mixed land use and sub-division of plots, among others. Unlike rural areas where one residential property is constructed on one parcel of land, cities have apartments, multiple owners in even plotted development, mixed land use and unauthorised colonies etc.
In most cities, there are frequent land transactions, and a plot is often divided among multiple owners. For instance, if a plot is divided between multiple family members, the land record might have the names of all the owners but may not reflect the location of the land holding on the cadastral map (which is the map with property details).
“In most cities, due to various reasons, including shortage of manpower and transfer of areas to urban local bodies, the revenue departments stopped updating land records. Due to this, we don’t have clear land titles in urban areas,” Jha told ThePrint.
Referring to the DoLR’s initiative, Jha said, “This is a welcome initiative because it represents a policy acknowledgement and a way forward regarding the gaps in urban property records. The proposed pilot projects should allow for learnings and course correction before this is taken up on a wider scale.”
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States that have taken the lead
Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka are among the few states that have a system in place to maintain urban land records, said rural development ministry officials.
In Gujarat and Maharashtra, urban land records are maintained by the City Survey Division. Explaining the process in Gujarat, a senior state revenue department official said that revenue records and property details in urban areas have been digitised, and the data is available at survey offices in each city as well as on the state government’s e-nagar portal, a citizen service portal.
According to IIHS’ policy brief, “Both Gujarat and Maharashtra use property cards for creating and maintaining separate urban land and property records for cities and inhabited areas. The property cards are maintained by the City Survey Division, a separate unit of the state Revenue Department.”
But in states such Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh (HP), Odisha and West Bengal, the land records in urban and rural areas are maintained in the same format, according to Jha. “The land record system does not distinguish between rural and urban areas in these states… Since the record formats are similar, they struggle to capture characteristic urban processes and details,” Jha said.
Land rights experts say there is a need to have a system in place to regularly update land record titles. “Absence of updated land records creates a huge problem for people when there are court cases or government plans to acquire land/property for development purposes etc. Improved urban land and property record systems can ensure legal recognition and protection of citizens’ interests, address anxieties associated with the transaction process, and reduce land-related disputes in the long run,” said Jha.