Bhu Bharati Project executive Summary

Introduction

The current system of Land Administration is fraught with many shortcomings. The current system provides for deeds registration “does not put any responsibility on any public authority while issuing the title only to the owner on transfer of property. There is no record of ownership of the property and its incumbent upon the buyer to investigate the title which always remain uncertain and in conclusion. The registration system provides for its registration where anybody can register, anything can be registered and a property can be registered any number of times. The registration record has no linkage with the revenue record or graphical record maintained by the Survey department. There are four departments viz., Registration Department, Revenue Department, Survey Department and Municipal Bodies handling information and transactions about land and there is little coordination on them. Most of the survey records have become outdated due to non-updating and have de-generated due to their age. As a result of these deficiencies in Land Records, citizens are facing serious difficulties in safeguarding their properties, enforcing their rights or obtaining quality service from Government agencies. At the national level it was estimated by McKinsey group (2001), that decline in India’s GDP growth rate due to unclear land titles is estimated to be 1.3%.

Bhu Bharati – Key features:

To address these problems of the land records a novel project called Bhu Bharati has been contemplated in Andhra Pradesh. Key features of which are as follows:

1. Conclusive Titles: The emphasis on land record creation and maintenance would be shifted from revenue collection to maintaining a clear and conclusive record of title of all properties in rural and urban areas.
2. Title Registration: The present system of deed registration will be replaced by title registration system, wherein it would be the legal responsibility of the Registrar to verify the title of the Transactor before allowing a transaction on property. The crux of the system is that only the legal owner will be entitled to transfer the property
3. Integration of services & creation of a single & dedicated Agency: The present system of multiple Government departments maintaining land records would be replaced by a single dedicated agency, which will create, maintain and deliver all property related services like survey, subdivision, maintenance of title records, registration of property transfers and maintaining property tax records in rural and urban areas.
4. Digitization & Autoupdation: All records will be maintained in digital form and processes will be designed in such a way that as the transactions occur, records will be updated automatically. Entire data will be maintained in a central repository.
5. Self-sustaining Revenue model: It will be a self-sustaining system so as not to depend on government funding for maintenance and updation. Land information will be priced for sale and appropriate user charges regime will be introduce.
6. De-mat e-conveyances: Transferring property will be de-mat and e-conveyance will be made possible.

Project Methodology

“BHU BHARATI” Project will take up resurvey and create fresh record using cost effective modern survey technologies like Aerial photography, Electronic Total Station, DGPS etc., Use of these technologies will make survey faster, less expensive and more accurate. The survey will be followed by a detailed title recording process. According to this procedure, enquiry teams constituted with government officials will enquire all titles, gather existing evidence available in revenue, registration etc. departments and prepare Provisional register of Titles. Both survey and title recording will cover even village site and urban properties. Therefore, at the end of this exercise, up to date record for all agricultural, non-agricultural, residential, commercial and industrial properties in rural and urban areas will be available.
Entire record will be created and maintained in digital form. When preparation of complete digital Register of title is completed, BHU BHARATI centers will be opened at appropriate places. The data will be maintained in central servers and all centers will be networked. Each center will deliver the full range of services pertaining to land.
As seen from the above, “BHU BHARATI” will encompass all of Survey Department, immoveable property registration of Registration Department, Land Record maintenance of Revenue Department and property tax and layout record maintenance of local bodies. Procedures will be re-engineered in such a way that the new system will be capable of auto updation and there will not be any necessity for repeating survey and title recording en masse in future.

Status of the project

The project has been taken up, Government has issued orders to take up this project throughout the State and a pilot has been started for one district i.e. Nizamabad covering about 8,000 sq.kms area. As part of the project, resurvey operations have been taken up using aerial photography, DGPS. Aerial photography has been completed and ground truthing is going on. At last count over 266 villages completed. The new law is under preparation and the first draft is ready. Revised processes have been documented and software is being written. A detailed project report has been prepared for rolling out the project throughout the state with an estimated cost of Rs. 1556 crores.

Detailed project report (DPR )

A Detailed Project Report (DPR) is prepared for the state rollout of Bhu Bharati project. NISG has been appointed as consultants for the preparation of the DPR. As per the DPR the total estimated cost of the project is approximately Rs.1555.58 cr and the proposed time of completion of project is 5 years i.e. by 2012. The estimated cost of aerial photo acquisition and surveying is approximately Rs.861cr which is around 55% of the project cost. The DPR explains the rollout strategy which includes the formulation of solution, Preparation of RFP and Bid process management. It also explains the Project Management which includes Monitoring & Evaluation management and also the risk mitigation system to overcome the various risks that arise during the implementation of the project. This is helped through project management software (see here), which makes it easier for businesses to be more organized and efficient.
The state wide rollout of the project is primarily divided into 4 phases covering 4 to 6 districts in each phase. The phased approach is adopted considering the various limitations like the acquisition of aerial photos, availability of department manpower and availability of domain expertise. The proposed time of completion of each phase is 18 months.
After the completion of the implementation and during the operationalization stage a Project Management Unit (PMU) is established to monitor the performance of the system and to see that the performance will adhere to the SLA.

Source: Bhu Bharati Project executive Summary