While delivering his keynote address at Digital Senate Series, Lucknow organised by Tech Observer magazine, Chairman Uttar Pradesh Revenue Board Pravir Kumar emphasised the importance of technology intervention in Uttar Pradesh and how emerging technologies could be critical for the state GDP and the nation's growth.
Kumar was of the view that since agriculture dominates the people's lives in the state, there must be a robust technology system to manage land records and revenue courts cases.
Sharing the Uttar Pradesh experience, Kumar said that in the past, the land records were maintained manually leading to manipulations, corruption and land scams as large number of cases of data manipulation at the level of junior tehsildar were reported.
He informed that to overcome the challenge of mismanagement in the land records, the state government came up with an integrated platform called ‘Bhulekh'. Under this project, land records have been digitised and a web portal has been created where all the land ownership related information such as ‘Khatauni' or ‘RoRs' (Records of Rights) are being provided online.
“Now, anybody can obtain a digitally signed copy of RoR from tehsil. These services are also being made available through Common Service Centre (CSC) on payment of a nominal fee. This has not only eliminated manipulation, cheating and improved transparency, also the number of cases in revenue courts are going down,” said Kumar.
On future roadmap of revenue board, he said that state government is aiming to make the entire process of land record management, a real-time affair including the mapping and data updation.