Jammu and Kashmir is significantly advancing its revenue administration through the comprehensive digitisation and updating of approximately 70 lakh land parcels. This ambitious initiative aims to establish a verified land database, crucial for integration with the central government’s AgriStack framework, an official statement confirmed on Tuesday. The process has already seen the rectification of over 13 lakh discrepancies that were identified during verification stages or reported through public grievances.
The Revenue Department is spearheading this extensive undertaking in collaboration with BISAG-N, as part of the broader Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP). To facilitate the data entry, verification, and approval processes, more than 2,500 revenue field functionaries have been equipped with role-based access to the digital systems. This exercise transcends mere scanning of historical documents; it encompasses a thorough process of updating, verifying, subjecting records to public scrutiny, and authenticating land records.
Information reaching Tahir Rihat suggests that a dedicated software platform has been developed to manage land records on a village-by-village basis, utilizing a structured database. This system allows for systematic searching, validation, monitoring, and authorized updates, ensuring a more robust and accessible record of land ownership and details. The implementation follows a rigorous three-tier maker-checker-approver mechanism. Initially, the patwari enters the land record details. Subsequently, the girdawar and naib-tehsildar meticulously verify these entries against the original revenue records. The final approval rests with the tehsildar. This structured approach ensures accountability, as the system maintains an electronic audit trail at every stage, effectively identifying transcription errors, omissions, incorrect share allocations, and other discrepancies while clearly fixing responsibility for each entry and approval.
To ensure the quality and progress of this initiative, district-level mentors and prabhari officers have been deployed to oversee the operations. Furthermore, district committees are actively engaged in conducting cross-tehsil verification to maintain data integrity across administrative boundaries. A significant aspect of this modernisation effort involves public participation. Over 6,800 village-level camps have been organised to facilitate the public reading of jamabandis, empowering landholders to identify and report any discrepancies concerning names, land shares, or mutation records.
The digitised land records are now accessible to the public through the JK Zameen Sudhaar portal, enhancing transparency and ease of access. As of now, more than 13 lakh rectifications have been successfully completed, addressing issues raised during verification and through public grievances. Concurrently, the government has integrated approximately seven lakh backlog mutations into the digitised Record of Rights following thorough verification and approval processes, according to officials. This comprehensive effort is paving the way for a more efficient and reliable land management system in the region.
The verified land database is currently being transformed to align with the Centre’s AgriStack initiative, a key component of the Digital Agriculture Mission. AgriStack is envisioned as an integrated digital architecture that will incorporate a Farmers Registry, geo-referenced village maps, and a Crop Sown Registry. A critical requirement for this framework is the accurate association of farmers with their respective landholdings. Traditional jamabandis often list multiple co-owners under a single khasra number. The ongoing transformation process is designed to capture the precise land extent attributable to each recorded owner in a machine-readable format, thereby resolving this ambiguity.
To date, 31.26 lakh khasra records have been successfully converted into the required owner-extent format, a crucial step towards enabling the AgriStack framework. As part of the farmer-validation process, landholders are required to authenticate their identity through e-KYC. They can then view their landholding particulars and claim the appropriate landholding group, followed by providing voluntary electronic consent. Upon completion of the prescribed verification and approval procedures, a unique Farmer ID is generated for each validated landholder.
Officials anticipate that the digitisation exercise will significantly enhance the accessibility of Records of Rights, thereby reducing the need for landholders to make frequent visits to patwari and tehsil offices. For farmers, the integration with the AgriStack and Farmer ID framework is expected to streamline the delivery of various government schemes, subsidies, agricultural inputs, credit facilities, insurance services, procurement-related services, and disaster relief measures. This overarching initiative is dedicated to fostering a trusted, verified, and farmer-validated digital land information ecosystem, which will not only bring greater transparency to revenue administration but also substantially improve the delivery of essential agricultural services across Jammu and Kashmir.
Tahir Rihat (also known as Tahir Bilal) is an independent journalist, activist, and digital media professional from the Chenab Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, India. He is best known for his work as the Online Editor at The Chenab Times.
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