UPOR will expose land sharks

The State Directorate of Survey Settlement and Land Records (SSLR) of the Revenue department will conduct a thorough survey of all properties, both private and public, map them by identifying their exact boundaries and record their history. The survey will identify all types of urban properties, including sites, houses, apartments, commercial buildings, lakes, karab lands and graveyards.

The details (of properties) will then be cross-checked with those in old village maps (villages once existed before becoming urban landscape).

According to official sources, details collected from the survey can be superimposed on the old maps, through which government lands can be identified. If a piece of land is missing, the government will look for documents to see if it had granted the land to someone in the past. In the absence of such documents, it will consider the plot as suspicious and notify the owners.

The SSLR on Saturday announced to launch the UPOR project from February 2012 in Bangalore. The project is being implemented on a pilot basis in five cities of Mysore, Shimoga, Hubli-Dharwad, Bellary and Mangalore. Besides, the SSLR will also issue a unique property cards (title documents) to the genuine owners of private properties after verifying the property documents under the project. The verification will be done using the survey map and the revenue records.

“Private property owners will hugely benefit from the project as proper title will be issued for their properties. Presently, there is no document to prove the title of any property. Once the project is implemented and property cards issues, multiple registrations of a property and falsification of documents will become almost impossible,” Revenue Secretary (Bhoomi and UPOR) Rajeev Chawla said.

Despite elaborate preparations by the SSLR, it is yet unclear if the government  will allow the project to go ahead in Bangalore, given the involvement of influential persons in large scale encroachment of government lands.

Some months ago, the government had transferred Harsha Gupta as the Deputy Commissioner of Mysore for taking action against land grabbers, who were identified under the UPOR project, sources said.

According to the report of erstwhile Task Force for the Protection of Government Lands, about 34,000 acres of government land are under encroachment in Bangalore Urban district.

The city survey under the UPOR was among the measures the task force had recommended to recover encroached lands. In the past, the government had lost several cases due to non-availability of documents, which resulted in its inability to hold on to its own land. The UPOR, according to officials, aims at delineating private from government properties, giving the authority clear proof of official land.