The much-acclaimed Karnataka’s ‘Bhoomi Project’ is to move on to the next step - computerisation of urban records.
The unique project of Karnataka, considered to be the only one of its kind in the country, has so far computerised 20 million rural land records in the State, covering seven million farmers and 35 million beneficiaries with a network of 177 project locations in 27,000 villages.
Except 42 towns and cities, urban areas do not have property records. The municipalities are maintaining the tax records though they need to be maintained by the SSLR department as per the KLR Act.
Computerisation of urban property records is expected to bring in the advantages of certainty in the minds of the owners, increased economic growth due to easy and speedier land transaction, decreased land disputes, increased municipal taxes as all properties get netted and tax modeling would be possible, and would result in framework for storing building plans.
The project is proposed to be completed in five years in all towns and cities through the private-public participation (PPP) model, the government sharing 20 per cent and the partner agency 80 per cent with a user charge regime. Rs 50 crore would be required from the Finance Commission.
Making a presentation before the 13th Finance Commission during its visit to H D Kote on last Saturday, commissioner for survey and land records of the government of Karnataka Rajeev Chawla sought another Rs 75 crore from the Finance Commission for comprehensive handling of spatial records in the Bhoomi project.
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Due to transactions over the years in Karnataka, 25 lakh properties have one single sketch but one spatial record with multiple owners leading to boundary disputes. Therefore, there was a need to break sketches into multiple sketches as to have one owner with one sketch. This project too was planned on PPP model and would take three years to complete. An amendment to the law to provide for this concept is also required, he said.
The concept of pre-mutation sketch, Chawla said, would ensure a non-spatial record (RTC), a spatial record in the form of a survey sketch (Tippan) and a single owner in future. Explaining how the Bhoomi project had touched the lives of the farmers with computerisation of manual records, the commissioner said so far 80 million copies had been provided from the Bhoomi kiosks.
Mutation incidence had increased three fold and land litigation was down by around 50 per cent according to the Revenue officials.
Prior to Bhoomi Project, land records were held manually. This was creating problems of low visibility and harassment. They were tamper-prone, dated records and led to cumbersome procedures. Computerisation had brought in transparency, provided easy access, made the records secured and up-to-date and the process was citizen friendly now.
The Bhoomi had resulted in electronic request for mortgage entries as lending agencies were linked electronically with the project. Electronic linking of land acquisition officers and off-loading of records to private sector by providing connectivity to Bhoomi database had been possible. Under Nemmadi project, 800 rural tele-centres were providing value added services to the farmers, Chawla explained.
The commission members expressed appreciation of the functioning of Bhoomi and Nemmadi projects in the Saragur Panchayat, which they visited.