Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hand over physical copies of property titles to their homes and the surrounding areas they own (rather than cultivated land) to around 132,000 landowners in 763 villages on Sunday in a major property reform. of land that could improve the finances of rural owners and also end property disputes that have raged for years, sometimes decades.
Holders can take advantage of property titles as financial assets for loans and will also help maintain a record of properties in rural areas; no such records currently exist. The land titles will be delivered under the “Svamitva” project launched by PM on April 24 and will map all urban or abadi (populated) areas of 6.40 lakh villages by 2024.
Homeowners in 763 villages, including 221 from Haryana, two from Karnataka, 100 from Maharashtra, 44 from Madhya Pradesh, 346 from Uttar Pradesh and 50 from Uttarakhand will receive physical copies of property titles as well as digital property cards, people familiar with the matter said.
The aim of this scheme is to provide an integrated asset verification solution for rural India, they added on condition of anonymity. The land of residents in rural abadi areas will be demarcated using the latest survey methods using drones and with the help of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, the Departments of State Revenue and the Survey of India. This will not only allow village home owners to use their homes as collateral for loans, but will also reduce costly rural litigation.
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Local representatives of the revenue department and representatives of other allied departments will prepare a people’s property register in the presence of the inhabitants. Along with this, a detailed agreement for the resolution of disputes on the ground has been established, the people explained.
From the beginning, Indian villages have been the backbone of its economy, because “Malgujari” or income from the land was the state’s main source of income, these people said. When the British took over the reins of government here, they inherited a centuries-long land registration system.
As their sole aim was to collect as much revenue as possible from land from tenants, the British established the Zamindari system in many parts of the country and the so-called ryotwari system in the remaining parts. Even when the cultivated land ownership and their measurement maps were prepared, they made no effort to measure the populated area of the village; they also did not attempt to determine the ownership of residents in those populated areas. This was not done as there was no revenue to be collected from the land in the abadi area. Unfortunately, even after independence, no effort was made to demarcate Abadi land or create property rights there.
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Due to the absence of any kind of registration of ownership or demarcation of Abadi land, whenever a dispute arises related to possession, drainage or boundaries, the parties must go to a civil court for the resolution of disputes, a long process that sometimes transcends generations.
According to a person well versed in land titling issues who asked not to be named, of the total pending cases in our country’s civil courts, at least 40% are related to disputes over Abadi land.
The concept of property ownership as a way to access credit and improve the financial situation of the poor is well established. It is the central thesis of the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto Polar, who argues that providing the poor with access to the apathetic would unlock their economic potential and prevent their assets from being what he calls dead capital.
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