About 90 per cent of villages in India have computerised the Records of Right (RoR), the basic primary record that shows land rights and property transactions. About 53 per cent of cadastral maps showing the boundaries and ownership of land parcels have been digitised, the Ministry of Rural Development told the Rajya Sabha on December 13.

The Centre, through the Digital lndia Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), is providing financial assistance to the States for the computerisation of land records.

“Till date, the computerisation of RoR has been completed in 5,91,221 (90 per cent) villages out of 6,55,959 villages across the country, and 66,60,226 (53 per cent) cadastral maps have been digitised out of 1,24,92,526 cadastral maps,” the Ministry stated.

Along with some States in the North East, Kerala (43.24 per cent) and Jammu and Kashmir (9.32 per cent) are lagging behind in the computerisation of land records.

The integrated land information management system under the DILRMP provides online, single-window, at-a-glance access to all available and relevant information to give a fair comprehensive position of any plot of land. The move helps reduce land disputes and checks fraudulent and benami transactions. Digitisation of land records does not require any fee from the land owners, the Ministry added.

Farmers hopeful

Farmers have expressed hope that the online system will help to weed out corruption at the village and district levels.

“We have to pay money for everything,” said farmer Baba Sawant. “Even to get a 7x12 extract we have to pay money to the government employee in the gram panchayat. Computerisation and digitisation will be useless if government babus continue to hold the documents.”

Karnataka was the first State to computerise land records under the ‘Bhoomi Project’, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Subsequently, the Centre introduced the DILRMP in 2008.

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