Land as an asset is unique because it is immovable, its value depends on its location, and with the growing population, its demand keeps increasing, while it’s supply is limited. Access to land (or land rights) has a wide-ranging impact on livelihoods, industrial, economic, and social growth. The prestige of a person is attached to the land.
Land ownership is broadly defined by the access to a land title. A land title is a document that determines the ownership of land or an immovable property. Having a clear land title protects the rights of the title holder against other claims made by anyone else to the property. Land ownership is determined through various records such as sale deeds that are registered and record of rights (RoR) chiefly Jambandi and mutations. Over the last few decades, the economy of the state has seen a shift from being agrarian based to becoming manufacturing and services based. This has necessitated the development of infrastructure, and a shift in land use from agriculture to commercial, industrial, and residential. Land that was earlier used for farming is now being used to set up industries, power plants, manufacturing units, build roads, housing etc.
More recently, land use is also changing due to urbanization and further expansion of such urban areas. At least 75% of the population of towns is engaged in non-agricultural work, and population density is on the rise. Rural areas are rapidly urbanizing. The housing shortage in urban areas is going on increasing. With the inner cities getting more crowded, in several cities, new housing is now being provided at the city boundaries. The scarcity of affordable housing in urban areas drives the people to live in unauthorized colonies. The dwellers in these colonies do not have access to a clear land title, or any ownership rights.
A benami transaction is one where a property is held by or transferred to a person but has been provided for or paid by another person. Black money generated in the country gets invested in benami properties. Unclear titles and non-updated land records enable carrying out property transactions in a non-transparent way. The Standing Committee on Finance (2015) examining the Benami Transactions Prohibition (Amendment) Bill, 2015 noted that generation of black money through benami transactions could be pre-empted and eliminated by digitization of land records and their regular updating.
Land administration essentially involves recording, processing and dissemination of information about the ownership, value, and use of land. Broadly, such information can be classified as details of the property (jamabandi and mutations), spatial records (such as maps, boundary limits), and transaction records (registered sale deeds).
Land ownership can be determined through a set of documents. These include:
i. the record of rights (RoR), which captures details such as the name of the land holder, the number and size of the area, and kind of land,
ii. the registered sale deed to prove that the property has been sold from one person to the other, and the appropriate stamp duty on the sale have been paid,
iii. survey documents to record a property’s boundaries and area, and prove that the property is listed in government records. These land records are stored and managed in the following manner:
1. Sale deed: At the time of purchase of an immovable property (land or property), both the seller and buyer sign a sale deed (a non-judicial stamp paper of a prescribed amount). Typically, a sale deed contains details of the property, market price of the property, and details of past transactions on the property. The sale deed is registered under the Registration Act, 1908. It is registered on a stamp paper, and the value of the stamp paper is known as stamp duty.
Once the deed is registered, it reflects and deducts the share of seller from his or her holding and process of mutation (recording the transfer or change of title of a property in the land records) initiates which is generated and sanctioned by the Tehsildar in accordance with the laid down procedure. This change becomes the part of the record of rights. Once the mutation/transfer comes into effect, the state government through the office of Tehsil provides documentary evidence of right over land in the form of mutation or through a copy of jamabandi.
The sale deed only captures information on the transfer of ownership, and a few property details such as the area and cost of land. Other information related to land, property records, and related transactions is collected and maintained across various documents. These include:
2. Record of Rights (RoR): The RoR is the primary record that shows how rights on land are derived for the landowner and records the property’s transactions from time to time. It provides (i) names of all persons who have acquired some rights with regard to the land, (ii) the nature and limits of their rights, and (iii) kind of land. These rights could be ownership, long-term leaseholds, or tenancy related. The RoR may also capture information regarding loans taken by the occupant, details on the rights of the owner or occupant of the land, and any community or government rights on the land.
3. Spatial land records: Spatial land records contain details of a property sketched on a map. These include land boundaries, plot area, connectivity with roads, presence of water bodies, details of surrounding areas, land use (agricultural, residential, commercial, etc., and land topology. The property-level sketch is generally updated every time a new entry is made in the RoR document.
Department of Revenue and Disaster Management is entrusted with preparation and updating, preservation and protection and management of private, public and government properties in the form of land records since English times. It is the duty and responsibility of the department to find ways and means to discharge this role in a more meticulous and trustworthy manner. The advent of new electronic technology in the form of Aadhar and PPP (Parivar Pehchan Patra) has eased the access and utility of welfare and social security schemes through linkage with these new tools. Today, benefits of most of the schemes reaching to the people in transparent and timeline manner which has enthused the trust and confidence of the people. Aadhar and PPP linkage is needed to be harnessed for the land records to achieve following objectives:
Objectives of linking of land records with Aadhar or PPP
i. to curb the fraudulent transactions, tempering with the record of private and public property,
ii. to dissolve the centuries old system of manual identification of transactors and replacing it with trustworthy, secure, reliable and authentic system of establishing identification through Aadhar and PPP
iii. to lessen the litigation through full proof, authentic and more reliant and trustworthy mechanism of property registration by employing the access of true detail of landowners via Aadhar or PPP
iv. to provide an added authentication of true landowners in Record of Rights (RoR)
Nearly the entire Record of Rights (RoR) has been digitized in all the Tehsils of Haryana. Computerization of Land Record has ensured systematic maintenance and retrieval of land records. For linking of the land record with Aadhar or PPP, list of landowners is desired to be generated for collection of mobile no., Aadhar no. and PPP no. of the landowners which will be collected manually by the patwaries or officials deputed for this purpose by district administration. The ismaye malkan (list of landowners) of any village may be easily generated and provided by the NIC for collecting the details of mobile no., Aadhar and PPP of landowners.
The process of enabling the link of Aadhar with land record may follow the steps given here under:
1. NIC/ DIO will generate the complete list of landowners (ishmaye malkan) from the system of all the revenue estates of a Tehsil/district either khewatwise or alphabetically. It would be better if the list of owners is generated khewatwise because it will ease the patwari to identify the landowner either himself or with the help of numberdar or any other person/s in the village who have knowledge of the landowners in the village. The entries in khewatwise list may be more compared to the alphabetical list. The information may be generated in the format given below:
i. Ismaye malkan (list of landowners) khewatwise
Name of landowner | Father’s name | Grandfather’s name | Khewat no. | Kind of land | Mobile no. | Aadhar no. | PPP no. | Remarks | |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
The first six columns 1 to 6 will be generated by the DIO/NIC and next 6 to 10 columns will be filled by the patwari, or any other person deputed by the administration.
ii. Ismaye malkan (list of landowners) alphabetically
Sr. no. | Name of landowner | Father’s name | Grandfather’s name | Khewat no. | Khasra no. | Kind of land | Mobile no. | Aadhar no. | PPP no. | Remarks |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
The first five columns 1 to 7 will be generated by the DIO/NIC and the next 8 to 11 columns will be filled by the patwari, or any other person deputed by the administration.
2. Sync the collected data of Aadhar with land record at Tehsil or NIC center.
3. Verify the authenticity of Aadhar of the landowners with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) server. For that, specific permission is required from UIDAI as per the Notification no. G.S.R.490(E) dated 5.8.2020 of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Central Government. Rule 3 of the above notification makes it compulsory, and Rule 4 provides for a proposal of permission which reads as follows:
“3. Purposes for Aadhaar authentication. – (1) The Central Government may allow Aadhaar authentication by requesting entities in the interest of good governance, preventing leakage of public funds, promoting ease of living of residents and enabling better access to services for them, for the following purposes, namely: –
(a) usage of digital platforms to ensure good governance;
(b) prevention of dissipation of social welfare benefits; and
(c) enablement of innovation and the spread of knowledge.
(2) Aadhaar authentication under sub-rule (1) shall be on a voluntary basis.
4. Preparation of proposal. – The Ministry or the Department of the Government of India or the State Government, as the case may be, desirous of utilising Aadhaar authentication for a purpose specified in rule 3 shall prepare a proposal with justification in regard to such purpose for which Aadhaar authentication is sought and submit. the same to the Central Government for making a reference to the Authority.”
4. Get the authentication of the Aadhar and its linkage with RoR of landowners approved in the specially convened Jalsha-e-aam (public meeting) in the village on pre-fixed date and time of the landowners.
5. After approval/consent of the landowners, Aadhar of the landowners be locked with land records.
6. Government owned, panchayat and shamlat, municipalities and corporations land may be linked to the Aadhar of the officer who is responsible for managing and supervising of the land of their respective departments or such lands may be locked by the order of competent authority so that no registration could be possible without specific permission of that department or organization to save these lands from fraudulent transfer.
7. In the event of taking appointment, Aadhar is entered which will fetch the details of the land of the landowner and, if it matches with the transaction, go ahead for the appointment.
8. At the time of registration, get the authentication of the land of landowner with Aadhar linked land records from UIDAI server which will generate a digitized number for registration and same will be printed on the face of document by the registering authority and document will be registered by following rest of the process.
9. A special counter may be erected for the authentication and linking of the Aadhar with land record in the Tehsil if the landowner/s has/have left for the linking of the Aadhar with his/her land records.
10. A follow-up plan for the continuous collecting and linking of the Aadhar needs to be drawn for the left-over landowners during the work such as girdawari for this purpose. Patwari or the revenue official for registration may collect the Aadhar of remainder of the landowners.
11. For grievance redressal of the linking process, Sub Divisional Officer (Civil) may be declared as First Appellate Authority who will redress the grievance within a month.
12. Deputy Commissioner may be declared as Second Appellate Authority.
The second way is to link the revenue record of landowners with PPP id. of the landowners. About 72 lakh families of Haryana state have been registered on the Parivar pehchan Patra (PPP) portal and out of these about 68 lakh families have been verified. PPP Authority possesses reliable and verified data of the families in digital form. PPP has enabled the people to access various government schemes seamlessly. More than 400 government services of more than 60 government agencies have been linked to PPP. The land record of landowners may be linked to PPP id. of the landowners. Data of PPP of the landowners may be collected following a similar process as that of Aadhar which has been described in detail above. Since, PPP is a state government programme for extending services to the common people in transparent and hassle-free environment, land records of the landowners can easily be linked to PPP.
Way forward
1. Land records must be updated by sanctioning all the pending mutations whether that of inheritance or otherwise.
2. Ownership of landowners broadly exists in two forms in land records i.e. Agriculture land and non-agriculture land (gair mumkin). Updating of the land record is continuous and regular for agriculture land compared to non-agriculture land because landless people are also owner of the dwelling units outside the Lal Dora and within the phirni (circular road of a village) by way of either allotment of residential plots or purchase of residential plots by their own. The process of linkage of agriculture land may be taken first or linking of whole land records with Aadhar or PPP may be taken up at a time.
3. NIC and PPP Authority are the specialized agencies and needs to be consulted to assess the feasibility and streamline the process of linking of land records with Aadhar and PPP.
