Landholdings to get unique numbers like Aadhaar

Representative image

The Rural Development Ministry will bring in standardised unique numbers for landholdings, akin to Aadhaar, aimed at cleaning up ambiguities around land ownership and to improve transparency, reports The Economic Times.

The number will include state, district or zilla, tehsil or taluka, block-level and street details as per relevance, besides plot size and ownership.

The ministry has started assigning numbers to surveyed plots. The plan is to link these numbers will Aadhaar and the revenue court database down the line, the paper quoted a senior government official as saying.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

The view is that the practice would facilitate real estate transactions, track ownership and resolve tax issues, enable proper disaster planning and response, and make it easier to acquire land for public projects, the source added.

“It’s like an Aadhaar for an individual. All issues related to sale/purchase, collection of taxes and ownership of the plot can be traced using one single number. Since this will be GIS-tagged, it will make it very simple to access details of any landholding,” the article quotes Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman of Feedback Infrastructures, as saying.

As many as two-thirds of India’s pending court cases are land disputes, and it is often also used as collateral for loans. Many thus welcome the development.

Anarock Property Consultants Chairman Anuj Puri told the publication, that unique numbers is 'long overdue' and would help attract more foreign investors, who prefer a formal paperwork.