The land records of Punjab will be fully computerised by July 2008. The government has engaged Microsoft to perform the task that suggested the model being implemented in Andhara Pradesh fro digitalisation. Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh was the first state in the country to achieve 100% computerisation of land records.
According to the sources, Faridkot will be the first district where land records will be fully computerised by January. Other districts to achieve 100% computerisation in January are Muktsar, Nawahshahar, Mohali and Rupnagar. The land records for Patiala, Kapurthala and Barnala will be computerised by February. Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Moga and Mansa will achieve 100% computerisation of land records by March. Sangrur, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ludhiana and Taran Taran land records will be 100% computerised in April. Jalandhar district land records will be computerised in May, Bathinda and Gurdaspur in June while Ferozepur will be the last district to have computerised land records by July 2008.
According to data compiled by director of land records, AS Bains, there are 38,22,967 “khewats” in the state. He said that data entries had started on November 4, 2006 and by October 21, 2007 as many as 16,04,891 khewats have been entered. Bains informed that Faridkot with 89% computerisation was ahead of other districts in computerisation work as districts like Ludhiana had only 5.65% entries.
The government did not believe in red tapism. It was felt that the easy availability of the copies of the records to the farmers, would end many of their problems.
It may be recalled that the World Bank, which had not made any significant contribution by way of financial assistance to Punjab in view of subsidies by state government to different sections, had suggested reforms in land records. The computerisation is sure to improve the credibility of the new system among people and reduction of errors at the time of issue of land records.
Official sources claim that once the land records become fully computerised, the farmers will get a credit worthiness card and can easily avail loans against their land as against the true value of their holdings.
The government is going all out to complete work on computerisation of land records in a phased manner by July next year as in case of mid-term poll to Lok Sabha.
The ruling party might win by encashing computerisation of land records as a major achievement of the state government. It may be recalled that the ruling party in its election manifesto had promised to computerise entire land records on coming to power.
Obviously, the party can get a handle to brow beat opposition with the slogan that it had delivered what it had promised.