Hyderabad: The Survey of India on Wednesday praised the government of Andhra Pradesh for its maintenance of land records.
The director of India’s central engineering agency, SV Singh said “Everyone knows the condition of land records in India. Maps used in villages across the country are not correct. An attempt was made to correct this anomaly in 2002 which was revised again in 2008. But nothing happened on that front.”
He further highlighted how Andhra Pradesh became the first state in the country to take up the exercise of correcting land records due to the efforts of chief minister Jagan.
“AP has a good, visionary chief minister. He not just dreamt but decided to correct land records in the state. At first, 10,000 surveyors were appointed. The state government then started using technology for land resurvey programme, including drones, helicopters, GNSS rovers etc to identify the land.” he said.
“Due to this, maps have now been made accurate, with a variation of just five centimetres,” Singh detailed.
“This is a milestone in the country. This is the first time in India that accurate maps have been prepared at the village level. This model needs to be implemented in other states as well.” Singh remarked. “Many other states have approached us after looking at this and we have started working on it,” he added.
The director praised the chief minister for his direct supervision on this front. “The survey has been completed in 7,000 out of 17,000 odd villages. This was possible only due to direct supervision by chief minister Jagan himself. He regularly conducted reviews with officials. This is an indication of the mutual cooperation between the Center and the state.”
Due to team work, we were able to make accurate maps. My special thanks to dynamic and young chief minister Jagan for making this happen, ” Singh concluded.Â
Background of Jagananna Saswatha Bhu Hakku and Bhu Raksha Pathakam Scheme
The YSRCP government has taken the initiative of conducting a survey of lands, a first in 100 years. This flagship programme was launched in December 2020 and is expected to be concluded by December 2023. The sole objective of the survey is to provide litigation-free property to people. With this, the YSRCP government is aiming to put a full stop to all land disputes and to empower people with land rights which nobody can challenge in the future.
The AP government aims to survey 40 lakh public and private properties in 123 urban areas and 85 lakh public and private properties in 13,371 Gramkantham (village habitations). Additionally, this is the first time that these municipal lands and village sites have been inspected. The project has been undertaken at an estimated cost of Rs 1,000 crore.
As per the government’s schedule, land registrations of 2000 villages will be completed by November 2022, another 4000 registrations will be completed by February 2023; another 6000 by May, 9000 by August, 13,000 by October and 17,584 by December 2023.