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State-wide digital database and GIS of cadastral maps


Alok Upadhyaya
Chief Executive Officer, Kampsax India Pvt. Ltd.
Gurgaon, India
alok@kpx.stpn.soft.net

Availability of accurate and updated cadastral maps is a primary requisite for successful planning and policy making for any country. Flawed cadastral maps can put land and revenue system at stake. This paper, at a conceptual level, highlights the drawbacks of the traditional cadastral maps and the possible advantages of digital cadastral maps over these.

At the 12th All India Cadastral Survey Conference in Hyderabad hosted by the State Government in November 1996 the Minister of Revenues – Mr T Devender Goud – admitted that: “Recorded or registered land particulars had largely failed to reflect either the correct title, boundary, extent or classification. Such imperfect land records had been the root cause of civil litigation, agrarian unrest and fall in farm production”. Mapping in India has till now been performed by SoI. India was mapped between 1965 and 1985 at 1:50,000 scale covering about 5000 sheets. Larger scale topographical mapping (1:1000 to 1:4000 scale) remains a dream for India. In fact only 2% of the country has been covered on large scale. Whereas, countries that have achieved accelerated growth have already completed large scale mapping of the entire country. Denmark started computerisation of land records in 1985, digitisation of cadastral maps in 1997. The entire data was web-enabled in 2000. In fact, an Orthophoto of the entire country on 40 cm resolution is available in public domain at the web site www.kortal.dk. This site has been maintained by Kampsax A/S. The specific area maps can be purchased via internet. Whereas India is still struggling with restriction policies and public is not allowed free access to digital maps of high accuracy which is needed to avoid cost and time overrun of infrastructure projects as well as maintenance of town utilities (500 important towns). None of these 500 towns have Utility Maps combining cadastral information with the utility. Even metro towns don’t have large scale updated maps.

Limitations of existing cadastral maps
India being an agrarian country with 70% of the population dependent on the agricultural practices, it still does not have an effective and productive land tenure reforms due to some inherent factors like:

• Mostly land record system, has not been modified and properly documented except for few urban pockets.
• Most part of the community land grabbed and utilized by the people without the ownership right and information.
• Most part of the community land distributed from time to time to poor and destitute population of the country has been either grabbed or put into legal conflict due to inherent poorly maintained land record system under severe malpractice.
• Differing hard copy records of land record system of the same region/area with different government departments like Forest and Revenue office giving rise to never ending property disputes and proper development.
• Still vast areas exist as unregistered land with no proper legal ownership either with government or private lands leading to vast wasteland untouched by proper planning and sustainable development.

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