New Delhi: The central government is planning to come up with a scheme to help states and Union territories (UTs) modernise land and property records in urban areas as a step towards streamlining the system to bring uniformity in record keeping and transparency in land transactions.
This comes on the back of implementation of the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) and the PM-SVAMITVA scheme, both in rural areas — the former for land parcels, the latter for residential areas.
To begin with, the government’s public policy think tank NITI Aayog has got the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and the Ministry of Rural Development, which is implementing the DILRMP, together to explore solutions to make the land transaction and other related processes in urban areas citizen-friendly, two senior MoHUA officials told ThePrint.
The first such consultations with 18 states and UTs were held on 28 June, while the second round took place last week. Possible solutions are likely to be presented at the next chief secretaries’ meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October or November, the MoHUA officials said.
“There are a lot of issues related to land and property records in urban areas as most cities don’t have cadastral maps (detailed revenue maps) so land and property records are not synchronised. This leads to problems in mutation of property and land dispute redressal,” said one of the officials.
The DILRMP is a flagship programme of the rural development ministry through which it has been issuing Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN), also known as Bhu-Aadhaar, to land parcels in rural areas since 2016. The PM-SVAMITVA scheme is being implemented by the panchayati raj ministry under which property cards are being issued to people in residential areas (abadi area) in villages.
Some of the states have already begun the exercise on their own. Earlier this year, the Madhya Pradesh (MP) government started a pilot project to prepare geo-referenced land maps along with property details of three different types of residential settlements in urban areas using drones.
At the consultation last week, Gujarat, Maharashtra and MP made presentations about the system adopted by them to bring reforms in land and property records.
“We are exploring the possibility of bringing a similar system in place to address land record systems in urban areas by understanding the best practices of other states,” the MoHUA official said.
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Keeping land record a challenge in cities
As mentioned above, absence of cadastral maps in cities or urbanised areas leads to problems in mutation (transfer of property rights), boundary disputes etc.
“As most states have discontinued the practice to keep maps, it has become difficult to maintain property records,” said the official quoted earlier.
The other challenge is vertical development, mixed land use, etc. Unlike rural areas where one residential property is constructed on land parcels, cities have apartments, multiple owners in even plotted development, mixed land use, and unauthorised colonies etc.
“We are looking at options such as a unique ID for each property so that all services are linked to it and people don’t face any inconvenience in property tax payment, getting mutation done etc,” the official said.
States adopt different models
The MP government has selected three different types of urban areas — a planned area (residency area in Indore), New Harsud (a new city set up to rehabilitate families displaced due to construction of Indira Sagar Pariyojana dam), and an urban village (Shahganj in Sehore district) — for the pilot project.
MP revenue secretary Sanjay Goyal told ThePrint, “We are using drones to prepare the maps of these residential areas with clearly defined boundaries of each property. Then we carry out a door-to-door surveys to verify the ownership details and the information is fed into the system.”
He added: “Each property and its boundaries will be geo-referenced in the map, just like what’s being done under the PM-SVAMITVA scheme. In most cities, the type of settlement is broadly like the areas we have selected for the pilot project. Once this exercise is done, we can issue an ULPIN number to each property.”
The challenges in cities are manifold, the revenue secretary said, as in some cities there are no maps of land records. “In MP, we are building the new maps on legacy maps of the cities, which were once villages. For vertical development, multiple apartment owners’ names will be entered against the land parcel in the map.”
Meanwhile, Gujarat has opted for a different model. Raj Kumar Beniwal, vice-chairman and chief executive officer of the Gujarat Urban Development Mission, said 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.
Beniwal said, “We are in the process of integrating all the data regarding properties, land records, civic services, property taxation and transactions. Various agencies have their own data about property. We are linking all this so that whenever a property transaction is registered at the sub-registrar office, the details are automatically updated in the records of all other agencies — such as urban local bodies for property tax, water supply department etc.”
There are 165 urban local bodies, including eight big municipal corporations in Gujarat. “We started this exercise two years back and as of now 75 percent of the work has been completed. Once done, people will be able to get all property related paperwork done online and will not have to go individually to each department,” he said.
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Rural areas take the lead
Of the 6.57 lakh rural villages in the country, records of rights (ownership documents) have been computerised in 94.7 percent villages (6.22 lakh villages) under the DILRMP, according to a central government press note.
The DIRLMP was launched as the National Land Record Modernisation Programme in 2008, and renamed in 2016. Under the centrally-funded programme, revenue departments have to computerise land records, the sub-registrar’s office and revenue courts and their integration, set up modern record rooms, and integrate land record database with Aadhaar (which is voluntary right now) etc. by 2025-26.
Sonmoni Borah, joint secretary, department of land resources under the rural development ministry, said, “As of today, close to 93 percent of the 5,303 sub-registrar offices in the country are computerised.”
He added, “In India, each state/UT has their own land information management systems. The initiatives or reforms of the department take care of the different systems of land management across states/UTs and at the same time, allow citizens to derive quality services uniformly through the DILRMP. These initiatives keep the services transparent, prompt and targeted.”
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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