Urban Bhoomi

Bhoomi to get urban makeover
TNN Feb 11, 2008

Like farmers, even owners of non-agricultural lands can now get an ‘extract certificate’ of their properties, which will hold more credence than the khata. Shortly, every inch of land in the state would be mapped under Urban Bhoomi, a new avataar of the existing Bhoomi project.

Bhoomi or computerisation of land records, the flagship of Karnataka’s e-governance projects, has been extensively used by farmers. Bhoomi provides for computerisation of agricultural land records by giving out a record of right, tenancy and crop certificate (RTC) to the land owners. A user fee of Rs 15 is charged per record. Bhoomi deploys online updation and state of the art biometric system, which authenticates users based on their fingerprints and curbs hacking of the system.

Urban Bhoomi is being seen as a major move to record all lands irrespective of their nature — private, government or non-agricultural. According to IT secretary in charge of e-governance M N Vidyashankar, Urban Bhoomi will incorporate property details provided by all the 216 urban local bodies, city corporations and Greater Bangalore and run its own land titling verification software.

To make the project a success, the first step is to bring stamps and registration, survey and settlement and land acquisition departments under Bhoomi umbrella. Any land transaction, be it sale or purchase, land notification and acquisition, will be linked to Bhoomi.

How will the project work? Like agriculture land records, even non-agricultural properties (only land, not buildings) will be computerised and a database made. Property owners can take the extract certificate from Bhoomi kiosks which comes with a user fee, which is likely to be Rs 15 per copy. This can be used as a vital property document.

Whenever any land transaction happens, the status will be updated automatically. For instance: if a plot in Jayanagar is sold, as soon as the document registration is done at stamps and registration department, the Bhoomi database will also be updated, Vidyashankar explained.

Among other initiatives to redraw Bhoomi will look into the following aspects: improving the process of reporting acquisition of rights, mapping the history of land transactions, having a web-based design to view RTC and mutation status and handling requests for alienation of agricultural lands for non-agricultural purposes.

New Requirements
Link Bhoomi with banks, registration department, judiciary and irrigation department. Streamline land acquisition for various purposes. Creating citizen ID and inserting the photo of the land owner.

‘Bhoomi will simplify land transactions’
TNN Feb 24, 2008

Bhoomi, the e-governance iniatitive to computerize rural land records in Karnataka, will be overhauled, said IT secretary M N Vidyashankar while delivering a lecture on ‘Information technology and e-governance initiatives in Karnataka’, organized by the Indian Institute of Public Administration in the city on Saturday.

Elaborating on the integration of Bhoomi to track land acquisition by bodies such as BDA, BMRDA and NHAI, he said all sub-registrar offices will be linked online. This will make the department of survey and settlement and inspector-general of stamps and registrations redundant, as every copy of record of rights extracted will generate a sketch of the land and village. Land transactions regarding ownership, tenancy, loans, nature of title, irrigation details, crops grown, crop loans, legal action and security scholarships for schoolchildren will be updated within 30 days.

“We will send out out an expression of interest in the next 10 days. The project will be completed within 18 months after it is tendered. Nearly 200 lakh properties from 30,300 villages will be made available online,’’ added Vidyashankar.
Why IT?

Batting for IT, Vidyashankar said, “India’s annual expenditure under nonplanned and planned heads is Rs 930 crore. But it is difficult to account for such a large sum. IT builds accountability and breaks geographical and interdepartmental barriers. We need e-governance to keep an eye on the government, as it highlights wastage and dishonesty.’’