THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala’s digital land resurvey is drawing nationwide attention for its accuracy and low complaint rate. Officers’ teams from some south Indian states visited Kerala to study the innovative technologies used in the process.
During their visit, teams from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had interactions with top officers of the Survey department. They also visited survey sites to get first hand experience. Andhra Pradesh government has requested the state to provide software solutions for digital survey and data management. Some other states are in talks for consultation and field visits.
“High accuracy is a highlight of our digital resurvey. Modern technologies help us to maintain accuracy within 0 to 5 cm. We have built an end-to-end digital land survey solution without any physical touch points. This is the first such solution in the country. Not surprisingly, the complaint rate is low. The rate of appeal land complaints (ALC) is just 0.39 pc,” says Survey Director Seeram Sambasiva Rao. “Initially, the ALC was about 13 pc and we brought it down through various strategies for community participation. People can view the draft survey map and records during the survey,” he added.
The digital resurvey will cover the state’s 1,550 villages in phases. 400 villages were selected in the first two phases. So far, 2.75 lakh hectares (21,72,804 land parcels) have been surveyed. Draft maps were notified for 90 villages and over 90 pc of works are complete in another 25 villages. The notification gives one-month time for the land owners to raise complaints. Next step is to notify the final map under Section 13 of the Kerala Survey and Boundaries Act.
Through the digital resurvey, the government aims to create an Integrated Land Information and Management System (ILIMS). Its public interface would be the “Ente Bhoomi” single-window portal providing all land-related services from the government, a pioneering initiative in the country. They include services from the Revenue, Registration and Survey departments. Under this, a common deed format, including pre-mutation sketch, will be introduced for property registrations. Revenue and survey departments will get real-time information on ownership change from the Registration department. The online services include mutation, tax payment and various certificates.
The trial run of the ILIMS developed by the National Informatics Centre is progressing.
A three-tier monitoring system at the state, district and village levels is in place for the digital survey. The state-level monitoring team gets information from a ‘daily progress dashboard’ where live details of the survey, including number of personnel at work, their exact location and even battery level of the equipment are available
Personnel
773 government surveyors
1,378 contract surveyors
2,012 contract helpers
Progress
Draft maps ready for 90 villages
2.75 lakh hectares (21,72,804 land parcels) covered
Purely ground-based survey
Kerala has adopted a purely ground-based survey. Drones are not used for actual surveys since their accuracy level is 10-15 cm as against the goal of 0-5 cm. Still, wherever a drone is flown, the images are used to create a base imagery