To help monetisation of rural properties, the government has set a target to provide property titles to over 45 million rural families in nearly 3,46,000 villages across states by the end of FY26, an official with the Union Panchayati Raj Ministry said.
The exercise is being carried out under the central scheme – Survey of Villages Abadi and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (Svamitva) – under which rural households get legal ownership papers for the homes and land they occupy.
The scheme is currently being implemented by the Union ministry in collaboration with state revenue and panchayati raj departments.Property titles to over 24.7 million people in 1,65,000 villages have been provided so far.
The survey, using drones for generating high-resolution maps of property parcels, has been completed in 3,28,000 villages. Using drones and advanced mapping tools, the initiative clearly marks property boundaries, an official said.
“We aim to provide property rights titles to 45 million to 50 million people by the end of FY26 for which over 95% of drone survey works have been completed,” an official told FE.
“This lack of legal records left property owners in these areas without formal records effectively barring them from accessing institutional credit to upgrade their homes or use their property as a financial asset for loans,” an official said.
Svamtiva has ended decades of reliance on revenue officials and patwaris for demarcating land ownership in villages, the official said.
The area surveyed over 3 lakh villages under the Svamitva of 67,000 sq.km has an intrinsic value of over Rs 132 lakh crore, according to an official note.
The scheme launched in 2020 aims to provide land titles or record of rights to all the rural households which would facilitate monetization of properties and enable bank loans, reducing disputes over ownership and support village level planning.
Key states which have generated property cards include Uttar Pradesh (10 million), Madhya Pradesh (3.99 million) , Maharashtra (3.52 million), Haryana (2.51 million), Gujarat (1.22 million) and Rajasthan (1.3 million).
However several states including Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and West Bengal has cited their own existing land records and engagement in bilateral discussions with the department of science and technology for a separate survey as reasons for not extending the national scheme
Svamitva aims to demarcate inhabited land in rural areas through the latest drone survey-technology in collaboration with panchayati raj ministry, state revenue departments, state panchayati raj departments and survey of India.
However the scheme does not cover tribal regions or panchayats extension to scheduled areas (PESA) as in several of these regions lands are jointly owned by communities.
So far property title cards to all inhabited villages of Haryana, Uttarakhand, Puducherry, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa and Tripura have been generated.
Officials acknowledged that for decades, the rural land surveys for settlements and record of rights are often decades old and in many states especially northern and western regions failing to map or document inhabited or Abadi areas of villages.
The funds under the scheme are provided to Survey of India for large scale mapping using drones and establishing continuous operating reference stations for states and union territories.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week had stated property value worth Rs 100 lakh crore has been unlocked in rural areas of the country under Svamitva scheme.
