26 States and UTs adopts Bhu-Aadhar: DoLR

Published
26th Apr, 2023

Context

The Department of Land Records (DoLR) has informed that at least 26 States and UTs have adopted the Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) or Bhu-Aadhar and seven more States are conducting a pilot test of the project.

What is Bhu-Aadhaar?

The Bhu-Aadhaar or ULPIN is a “14-digit alpha-numeric number generated based on the latitude longitude of the vertices of each land parcel”.
It is designated to be the “single, authoritative source of truth of information on any parcel of land or property to provide integrated land services to the citizens as well as all stakeholders”.

Other important initiatives for land records

Bhu-Naksha initiative

The Bhu-Naksha project introduced in 2022 is another project under the Digital India Land Record Modernisation Programme implemented in 2016.
The Bhu-Naksha initiative provisions for mapping boundaries and conducting spatial measurement of land to computerize land records and produce digitized maps of a region with parcels of demarcated land.

These maps are editable based on the results of property divisions in G2G (govt to govt) and G2C (govt to citizen) domains.
These parcels of land are then identified by a Bhu-Aadhaar number.

National Generic Document Registration System (NGDRS)

As many as 28 States and Union Territories (UTs) in the country have adopted the National Generic Document Registration System (NGDRS).
NGDRS is a digital portal for maintaining land records.
The NGDRS is an application developed for allowing people to buy land online via electronic registration of property and documents. The project was initiated by the Department of Land Resources under the aegis of the Ministry of Rural Development.

What is India aiming for?

The Indian government is aiming to digitize 100 per cent of land records by 2024.
The initiative to create a unified database for land and property records comes alongside other government projects to digitize health and education records through a similar foundational plan which involves creating separate registries for stakeholder entities, a unique ID (in this case the Bhu-Aadhaar) linked to common national IDs like Aadhaar and integration of these databases via APIs which allow for interoperability of services like registrations, managing certifications, transfer of land ownership, etc.

What is the need?

Land disputes account for 66 per cent of civil cases in the country.
These disputes mainly arise out of issues related to land ownership and whether or not the state has the power to redistribute land, which may have historically been inhabited by various indigenous communities of that region.

What are the challenges?

As the government speeds up the process to digitize land records, concerns related to

accuracy in mapping the areas as per physical demarcations
lack of documentation
manipulation of digital records
uncertainties about mechanisms to challenge digital records on the basis of existing rules