Digital India moves at snail's pace on land records overhaul

A continuous narrative, irrespective of the government in power, is the promise of ‘development’. Contemporary history is replete with examples of government programmes taken up with much fanfare but giving tepid results due to faulty design or shoddy implementation. Often, the most important programmes are not taken up due to long gestation periods, pressure from special interests or simply the lack of political will. One programme that is desperately needed but one that seems to be a low priority is the need to undertake a comprehensive overhaul of land records in the country.

The stated aim of the government, central and states, is to move towards providing a Torrens title, wherein land ownership is transferred through registration of titles instead of the present system of using deeds and attendant conveyancing of deeds. This change necessitates the creation of a register of land holdings that comes with a state guarantee to the title of ownership to those whose names appear in the register.

Consequently, a feeble attempt to streamline land records started in August 2008 under the auspices of National Land Records Modernisation Programme (NLMP), now renamed Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP). It proposes to “computerise all land records including mutations, digitisation of maps, integration of textual and spatial data, survey/re-survey, updation of all survey and settlement records, including creation of original cadastral records wherever necessary, computerisation of registration and its integration with land records maintenance system and development of core geospatial information systems (GIS)”.

The stated advantage is that such a system will facilitate a single window to handle land records and one that automatically updates all the related records once registration is complete, thereby making any reference to past documents unnecessary in the future. There is no doubt that the promised system is an improvement over the present system, which requires updating of different documents, like record of rights (RoR) in the village, electricity records, etc. The present land record management system is beset with multiple problems, primarily fraudulent registrations, misclassification of land and value of the property, leading to huge leakages in revenue for state governments.

Apart from this, disputes over title deeds abound, often spilling over to the courts and clogging an already overburdened judicial system. Ideally, a comprehensive survey/re-survey of all the land in the country, digitisation or, even better, dematerialisation of the land records is preferable. Past experience in the realm of dematerialisation of securities indicates that over the long term, it has been vastly beneficial to stakeholders.

In nearly a decade of its existence, NLMP/DILRMP has made, at best, marginal progress, and that’s visible from the official statistics available in the dashboard of the programme website. The programme is under various stages of implements and covers all 655,518 villages in the country. It is claimed that about 86% of the computerisation of land records is complete, while integration of the sub-registrar offices (SROs) has been completed to the tune of 54%.

Implementation challenges

Unfortunately, completion of the most important tasks such as digitisation of cadastral maps, integration of land records and property registration as well as survey/resurvey of land have been slow or even minimal: about 47%, 54% and 9% completion respectively; integration of textual and spatial data is about 30%. Other parameters, like providing citizen-centric services related to RoR is less than 10%. Despite nearly a decade, only about 3,639 of the 5,083 SROs have internet connectivity.

Needless to say, land record modernisation is not easy to implement, despite its many benefits. Invariably, any attempt gets stuck in a host of legal issues. As the government itself acknowledges, there is no law empowering the government or any of its agencies to create a record of titles which would be conclusive. Further, more than half a dozen major laws need to be changed to bring about an efficient overhaul. Additionally, there are issues related to the present Registration Act, which provides for registration of deeds and not titles, as well as the fact that land and rights over land, land revenue are state subjects, while registration of deeds is a concurrent subject under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.

Another fundamental hurdle is the problem of non-survey of land for decades. The CAG in its reports on the revenue sector of different states points out that survey/re-survey of land has not taken place for decades, though it is mandatory to undertake such a survey every 30 years. This means that most of the land-related documents have not been updated. In the occasional case where such survey has started, it is mostly an incomplete exercise due to financial pressures and lack of qualified human resources. Since most states are dancing at the doorstep of fiscal troubles, it is difficult for them to spend hundreds of crores of rupees on resurvey of all the land in their boundaries.

At the same time, states are unlikely to give up one of the most important pillars of their administrative powers. Hence, the best option is for the central government to provide the required funding for the completion of a comprehensive overhaul, including dematerialisation of the land records.

Unfortunately, if the past is any indication of the future, political will to undertake such a massive overhaul is lacking. Even if political will is mustered at the state level, it is unlikely that the central government would be willing to provide large-scale funds to make such an overhaul quickly. Instead, the past proclivity of the central government has been to steadily encroach on the powers of the states.

(The writer is an independent researcher based in Andhra Pradesh)