In a move that is going to be of immense help to the state’s farmers in designing cropping patterns and planning fertiliser usage, Madhya Pradesh will release comprehensive georeferencing database of its land records soon.
Sandip Das
In a move that is going to be of immense help to the state’s farmers in designing cropping patterns and planning fertiliser usage, Madhya Pradesh will release comprehensive georeferencing database of its land records soon. It will be the second state after Gujarat to do so.
Policymakers would also find the facility handy, with digitised cadastral maps of the state to be superimposed with satellite images procured from Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).
With the database in place, the state government, sources said, would be carrying out region-specific comprehensive planning and designing for various projects, covering sectors such as agriculture, roads, irrigation, water supply, etc. without having to visit the actual sites.
Cadastral map would include details of ownership, tenure, location, dimensions and at some time, even the value of land.
According to Hari Ranjan Rao, secretary, Department of Information Technology, Madhya Pradesh, various government departments, including revenue, forest and agriculture, had collectively worked to put together available individual maps and digitised land records and merged them with actual satellite images for creating the georeferencing database. This data would be ready for use in the next few weeks.
Rao said that three different sets of records — individual patta or map, land record digitisation and Isro satellite image captured real time — are to be placed on the single platform referred as georeference.
He said that the cost of generating such a data was not very high as most information was available with the government, adding the benefits would far outweigh the cost.
“The utility of the such database is manifold. The data would help farmers choose appropriate crops and in application of fertilsers on the basis of soil conditions,” Rao told FE.
In case of crop damages due to hailstorms, excessive or scanty rainfall, the government can specifically identify people in an area impacted by the nature of the calamity using this georeferencing data.
Rao said georeferencing data for 56,000 villages and 400-odd towns in the state would be available shortly.
Under the National Land Records Modernisation Programme launched in 2008, most of the states with the exception of few north-eastern states, have computerised all the land records, including mutations and digitised maps.
The Narendra Modi government’s Digital India programme, among other things, also aims at digitising land records, birth and death certificates, mark sheets and other such utilities.
According to an official with the department of land resources under the ministry of rural development, states like Gujarat, Haryana and West Bengal have progressed considerably in the field of modernisation of land records.
Haryana has integrated its land records system and the registration systems resulting in real time and up-to-date land records while West Bengal has integrated textual and the spatial data of the Record of Rights.
The term georeferencing is commonly used in the geographic information systems field to describe the process of associating a physical map with spatial locations.
Gujarat has digitised maps and has superimposed more than hundred GIS layers relating to various attributes such as wastelands, agriculture land, water bodies, power lines, roads etc. on these digitised maps.