Govt to integrate all online land revenue services

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 10

The state government is initiating a project to integrate its online land revenue services. All land records which are already digitised — except for a few villages — will now be available on a single platform and will be updated simultaneously.

So far, the land records are available across different platforms. The registration software is not linked to the land records and GIS-based cadastral maps are not available. The effort is now to create a complete land administration and management tool, which will provide all services, besides providing for Aadhaar-based identification. 

For this, the government is seeking the help of experts from the state e-Governance Mission Team. Senior Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Rajiv Chawla, who is credited with conceptualisation and execution of the Bhoomi project in the southern state, is also being involved.

Vini Mahajan, Financial Commissioner, Revenue, said they were looking at building a special programme for e-integration of all land records, custom-made to suit the needs of the state. The FCR said once the integration was done, updating records after the sale or purchase or change in land titles would be done simultaneously.

The state digitised its land records a few years ago. Records like jamabandi register, mutation register and roznamcha register of all villages falling within a tehsil and sub-tehsil are stored in digital form at fard kendras. Anybody who wants a copy can go to the kendra and obtain it across the counter, instead of running after revenue officials (patwaris).

However, while the registration of all sale deeds and mutation is done online, only the current record is available. The online record for the status of land five years ago automatically disappears from the system.

Also, sources point out that there are almost one lakh pending cases where proper partition of land among legal heirs has not been done. Even though the government had allowed for the transfer of property between blood relatives and spouses without charging any transfer of property fee in November 2015, not many have come forward to avail this offer and get the property partitioned. 

Another reason for the land partition not being done is that the land has been mortgaged to banks/financial institutions for availing loans.