Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy launched an ambitious comprehensive land survey exercise at Takkellapadu village of Jaggaiahapeta mandal in Krishna district on Monday.
Dubbed YSR Jagananna Shaswata Bhu Hakku and Bhu Raksha, the survey is one of its kind initiatives taken up by the government, aimed at putting an end to land disputes, middlemen, corruption and ensuring transparency.
With the scheme, the state government will generate an unique identification number for every land parcel.
The survey will be carried out by the Survey of India, revenue, panchayat raj and municipal administration departments, covering 1.26 crore acres of agricultural land in 17,000 villages.
It will cover 85 lakh government and private lands within the limits of 13,371 gramakantam lands, 40 lakh government and private properties and 10 lakh plots in 110 urban areas.
The survey, being conducted after 100 years, will be executed in three phases: First phase (December 2020 to July 2021), second phase (October 2021 to April 2022) and third phase (July 2022 to January 2023).
In the first phase, 5,000 villages will be covered.
"For the first time in India, these landowners will be given a title deed for their land along with a map in digital format and a passbook. With every new survey, accurate revenue records will be prepared for every immovable property," said an official statement.
Using modern equipment like drones, continuous operating reference stations (CORS) and rovers, the surveyors will tag the land parcels to the exact latitude and longitude.
After completing the survey, they will prepare digitized cadastral maps which will host all the details of lands in a village.
With 4,500 teams, the surveyors will set up 70 base stations. The teams will consist of village and ward secretaries and surveyors.
As many as 14,000 surveyors will take part in the exercise, out of whom 420 have already been trained.
"Survey stones will be installed once the marking of the land is completed. The CM has also directed officials that the sub-registrar office will also be at the village secretariat level, where the digitized property register and title register will be made available," said the statement.
Refuting the criticism by some people, Reddy said the survey is to reorganise the chaotic land records pending for so many years and aimed at protecting the lands of people and farmers from encroachers.
"Land resurvey is being taken up in three phases after 100 years in a foolproof manner by involving the Survey of India and appointing 16,000 surveyors. Clean land records are required to punish fraudsters. There has been a false propaganda by the yellow media on the survey for some time now," observed Reddy.
He said the government is creating a revolutionary change by setting up registration offices at the village level, including mobile tribunals to resolve land disputes.
After launching the survey, Reddy himself laid the first survey stone in Takkellapadu village.
As land has become scarce, many times it emerges to be a major bone of contention across the state, sometimes leading to ugly spats as well.
Nowadays, even small villages are witnessing real estate activities in the southern state which involve multiple middlemen tinkering with the documents and other fraudulent deeds.