CHENNAI: In a bid to curb fraudulent transaction of government land, work on creating a government land database has begun with 2.85 lakh land records of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR and CE) Department being identified till now. The database of the lands is being developed with the help of National Informatics Centre interface. It is learnt that the HR&CE department identified the lands by correlating the old survey number with new survey numbers.
Official sources told Express that 60 to 75 per cent of land records belonging to HR&CE department have been tallied with Tamil Nilam database. The entire process is likely to be completed in two months. Interestingly, besides mapping HR&CE department property, lands belonging to highways department and Sipcot will also be mapped.
This comes after the State government issued a deadline to all departments to map all government lands and make it available centrally within the first week of November after which a crucial meeting will be held.Currently, lands vested with revenue are recorded as ‘government’, but those in the possession of departments like Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments and others are classified as ‘Patta lands’ and face threat of fraudulent transactions as currently they could not be blocked for patta transfer.
As a result specific codes will be assigned to each department and their lands will be marked in ‘Tamil Nilam’ Land Records database, which is used by registration department for updating the survey number details in the market value guideline database in Software Application Star 2,” as master database.
Sources said that once the lands are marked in Tamil Nilam database as lands of government departments, with specific codes for each department, those lands will not be registered and malpractices can be avoided.Sources also said the State government is also thinking of including the lands involved in acquisition not to be allowed for any transactions after publication of preliminary notification.
“When such lands are registered after publication of notification for acquisition, it will escalate the market value leading to several problems during valuation process in acquisition, the sources added.
Meanwhile, the commissioner of land administration has asked all heads of departments to depute nodal officer for creating the land database.