Land records to go online in dist from July 4

Bareilly: In what could be of immense help to land owners and officials concerned, online access to land records would soon become reality in Bareilly district as the local administration is embarking on a mission to launch a web-based software for online management of land records. Once it is done, all offline land records across the district will be just a click away. The software is likely to go online on July 4.

Talking to TOI, principal systems analyst at National Informatics Centre (NIC) Manoj Sharma said, “The Uttar Pradesh government had decided to create a digital repository of land records in the state with the aim to bring in transparency. It will also help in verification process during registration or while applying for loans from banks.”

Sharma claimed that once the land records go online, all details related to land will be just a click away thereby reducing woes of locals in changing particulars like ‘change in deed’ and others.

It may be recalled that at present all land records are offline and are maintained by offline software ‘Bhulekh’, which has been operational for the past 15 years. The software enables officials concerned to maintain land records under various categories, including owner’s details, area, assessment, nature of possession of the land, tenancy and others. The offline software meant to be updated on weekly basis frequently faced several challenges, including connectivity problem along with officials concerned failing to provide data to NIC officials for uploading in allotted time, which delays the procedure for several days.

Sharma said, “The new software had been updated with all existing land records in data base to reflect present status before uploading data to the central server at national data centre in New Delhi which is connected to the state data centre. Thus, there will be no problem related to connectivity, and all officials at the tehsil level will be given separate logins and passwords. They will be able to make direct changes to the land records after orders from competent authorities. The new online site will be secured with digital signature of officials, and any changes made in the land records without proper authorisation will be treated as illegal.”

According to officials, there are 2,120 villages in Bareilly district that compromises six tehsils, including Sadar, Aonla, Nawabganj, Meerganj, Faridpur and Baheri.