In the history of Kashmir region, we know of two stages when land record schemes were floated and the entire land was measured and entitlement recorded. The first happened under the supervision of Raja Todar Mal, Emperor Akbar’s Revenue Minister, who ordered land survey after Kashmir became part of Imperial Mughal Empire in A. D. 1586. This was necessitated by the compulsion of imposing land revenue and taxation on peasantry and the Mughal rulers intended to enforce uniform procedures of taxation. The second survey was conducted during the reign of Maharaja Pratap Singh around A.D. 1891. This State based survey was conducted by a British Revenue expert Lawrence, who happened to be a senior revenue officer in the Government of Punjab under the British rule. In Kashmir it is known as “bandobast”. Though not very scientific and foolproof, yet the bandobast of Lawrence was marked improvement on what Raja Todar Mal had recorded.
Ever since, the updating of land records in the State, continued on the foundation laid down by Lawrence. Twice in a year, at spring and autumn, technically called rabi and kharif, Revenue officials made survey, entered important information about the holdings, the condition of crops, entitlement, sales and transfer of ownership etc. At the root of this exercise stood two very crucial revenue officers, namely the patwari and girdawar and then a complete echelon of revenue structure till the pyramid culminated with the Revenue Minister as the final authority.
This is an obsolete system no doubt. It is prone to serious errors and omissions. It is cumbersome, and it is archaic. Landed properties have been changing status very fast and proper entry of these changes is of great need. We are happy to know that the State Government has focused its attention on digitizing the entire land record in the State and thus bring about a revolution in the concept of land recording practice. The Government has worked on the scheme and the first stage of the scheme, namely Request for Proposal will be put out in public domain. It has to be a time bound scheme and proposals for outsourcing the entire work to competent and experienced IT service providers have been invited by January 24, 2015. On completion of Phase I, Phase II of the scheme will begin. In J&K, an empowered Agency viz. Jammu & Kashmir Land Records Management (JaKLaRMA), headed by Financial Commissioner (Revenue) as its Chief Executive Officer in an Ex-officio capacity has come into being which is charged with the responsibility of conducting the entire operation within stipulated time frame.
This is a revolutionary scheme in essence. Its benefits are immense. In the first place it ensures transparency. Anybody can have access to his entitlement and the status of such entitlements. It will reduce and finally do away with the most cumbersome practice of obtaining any facet of land record from the Revenue Department because after digitization, anybody can download the record that he needs. This will also maximally reduce the work of the revenue functionaries. Of course, the modernization scheme has been approved after full consultation with the Union Ministry of Rural Development, Department of Land Resources, which approved an Annual Action Plan for Rs. 60.00 crore of 12 districts of J&K for Phase-I.
It needs to be stated that in recent times, land mafia has become very active in our State. A nexus has come to be formed among various sections of society including the state functionaries and other malevolent elements. Hundreds of thousands of state land have been encroached upon or illegally and unauthorized occupied of course with the connivance of revenue functionaries. The records are sometime mutilated or at other times deliberately distorted. All this situation results in litigation and hundreds of thousands of land dispute cases are pending in the courts of law. Many of these cannot be decided owing to lack of proper or adequate evidence. These and other difficulties will be removed once digitization of land records is finalized. We, therefore expect the Revenue Department to expedite the digitization at maximum speed because it is in the larger interests of the State and the people.
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