Sameeksha App gets accuracy, speed boost from today

Come Monday, the Revenue department will start the process of digitising all its maps to make the Sameeksha App more useful to the people.

Sameeksha was launched as the upgraded version of Dishaank, where digital sketches of plots, their dimensions and details were available for people on their mobile phones. Dishaank merely showed the survey numbers of each plot and where they were situated.

Now, the digitising of the data will help ascertain encroachments and maintain records. This will also benefit citizens to access details of their site maps on their mobile phones with ease.

The department is doing this in two steps. First, it will digitise the existing sketches of all survey numbers available. The next step will be digitising the maps based on ground survey as and when applications come.

Munish Moudgil, commissioner, Survey, Settlement and Land Records, said more than 5,000 surveyors have been trained so far. There are 1.7 crore maps from the state which will be digitised first. The aim is to digitise at least 60,000 a day and then start work of ground survey digitisation in another 15 days.

Digitisation of sites as on the ground will start after the staff become conversant with the nuances of the process so that there are no errors. The idea of the App is to help eliminate errors and speed up the process of providing land records, he said.

The department had aimed to launch the App in April, but delayed it because of elections and technical glitches.

1960 maps as base

Normally, sketches are physically drawn on paper after taking measurements on the ground, but with Sameeksha it will be digitally drawn and displayed on the App. The Revenue department is using the 1960 maps as the base maps for all record purposes. Officials say they give the exact picture of Bengaluru and Karnataka.

“The mobile App has been built by Tinkerix, a start-up by IITians, and they have done a fabulous job. The backend work on the App and digitisation is being taken care of by the Bhoomi monitoring cell. These maps have been created using GPS technology,” Moudgil said.

By going digital, the department aims to ensure that there are no discrepancies on the ground. Inaccurate entries and favouritism will be eliminated. Time taken by officials to draw maps after visiting sites is speeded up. Tracing records of sites is also faster. Digitisation will also bring to light errors committed by officials, if any, and how many transactions have been made for each site.