New Delhi: in which country two third Most of all the pending cases are related to property disputes, frauds and to check ‘benami’ transactions. A complex land reform that has been underway for over a decade is finally inching towards completion.
By March 2024, India aims to digitize 100 per cent of its land records and land registration process, and give each land parcel a 14-digit alpha-numeric identity, also known as Bhu Aadhaar, senior department officials The Department of Land Resources (DoLR) under the Union Ministry of Rural Development told ThePrint.
“The Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) or Bhu-Aadhaar will contain the longitude and latitude coordinates of the land parcel and is based on detailed survey and geo-referenced cadastral maps. It will cover all land parcels – rural as well as urban. We are hopeful of completing the ULPIN project by March 2024,” Hukum Singh Meena, additional secretary, DoLR, told ThePrint.
So far, ULPIN has been issued to 26 States and Union Territories – Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Goa, Bihar, Odisha, Sikkim, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana, Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala and Ladakh.
It is currently under implementation in the remaining states and union territories, except in Meghalaya, which has a tradition of community ownership of land.
ULPIN is part of the Digital India Land Records Modernization Program (DILRMP), a 100 percent centrally funded scheme. It was earlier known as National Land Records Modernization Program and was approved by the cabinet in August 2008. It was later renamed as DILRMP and implemented as a Central Sector Scheme with effect from 1 April 2016.
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What is Geo-Aadhaar and why is it needed?
Till now, different states were using different methods to assign unique IDs to land parcels in computerization of land records.
This made it difficult and cumbersome to extract vital information about farmers and their land. In many cases, land parcel numbers were repeated in each village, making it difficult to establish farmer-land relationships.
“There was no standardization of data. The idea with ULPIN is one nation, one registration system.
To address this, DoLR, in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Department of Science and Technology and the National Remote Sensing Centre, launched the Unique Land Parcel Identification Number System.
A 14-digit alpha-numeric unique ID is assigned to each land parcel based on the geographic coordinates of the corner of the parcel. It complies with the Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) standard and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard.
According to the DoLR presentation accessed by ThePrint, A unique ID will help in sharing of land record data among departments, financial institutions and all stakeholders.
“Standardisation at the data and application level will bring about effective integration and interoperability across departments,” the presentation said.
It will also help farmers to leverage their land and use it as collateral to borrow money from banks.
Addressing a National Conference on “Bhoomi-Samvad IV on Implementation of ULPIN” March 17Rural Development Minister Giriraj Singh said that once the digitization process of land records and registration is completed, it will help in reducing the pendency of court cases related to land disputes.
“The loss of GDP to the country’s economy is about 1 per cent due to the stalling of projects due to litigation related to land disputes. A study says that 66 per cent of all civil litigation in India is related to land or property disputes, and the average pendency of a land acquisition dispute is 20 years,” said Singh.
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Also on the anvil: Transliteration of the Record of Rights
It is not just ULPIN. The Digital India Land Records modernization program has other components as well, including transliteration of records of rights into any of the 22 languages recognized by the Constitution.
At present, records of rights are maintained in local languages in each state and union territory.
“Language barriers pose serious challenges to access and use of information in an understandable form. To address this problem in the country’s land administration, the government, with technical support from the Center for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune, has The initiative has been taken to transcribe the records of rights available in the language into any of the 22 languages recognized by the Constitution,” the DoLR said in the presentation.
DoLR officials a parliamentary panel It aims to implement all the components of DILRMP in full swing by 31st March 2026. “Efforts are being made to complete One Nation One Registration by 2024,” the DoLR had told the parliamentary panel.
(Editing by Richa Mishra)
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