OPINION | Building trust in India’s property system through digitisation

A transparent property system is not just economic infrastructure; it is civic infrastructure.

Nearly 67% of civil cases in India are linked to land and property disputes. Behind this staggering number lies a simple but deep-rooted problem: India has never had a single, reliable source of truth for property ownership.

For decades, land records were maintained as fragile paper files scattered across local offices—often handwritten, poorly preserved, and vulnerable to human error. For generations of homebuyers, verifying a property title has meant chasing missing documents, reconciling conflicting ownership histories, and navigating a bureaucratic maze that leaves even experienced lawyers uncertain.

At a time when India is rapidly digitising everything from payments to identity, this trust gap in property ownership remains one of the biggest barriers to transparent real estate transactions, faster credit flow, and long-term economic growth.

Digitisation is a Progress, But Not Certainty

Over the last decade, the government has made genuine efforts to modernise land records. Several states have digitised legacy documents, mapped survey numbers, and launched online portals. The Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) marked a major shift—citizens could, for the first time, access Records of Rights (RoR), encumbrance certificates, and mutation records online.

This was an important step forward. But access alone is not the same as trust.

On the ground, India’s property data ecosystem remains deeply fragmented. Each state, and often each district, runs on its own software, formats, data standards, and backend architecture. Some portals are modern and updated; others rely on poorly scanned PDFs or incomplete records. A simple correction, such as fixing a survey detail or updating an address, still often requires a physical visit. Mutation processes differ widely, and integration between departments such as registration, revenue, municipalities, courts, and utilities is minimal.

The result is a familiar frustration for buyers and homeowners alike:

you may have a digital portal, but you still don’t have digital certainty.

Broken Accuracy, Standardisation, and Integration

Three structural gaps continue to undermine trust across the country.

1) Data Accuracy

Years of manual entries, administrative changes, and mismatched survey numbers have created deep inconsistencies. Digitisation has often meant scanning legacy errors rather than correcting them. If the underlying record is wrong, the digital version only makes that error easier to access, not easier to fix.

2) Lack of Standardisation

Every state speaks a different “land records language.” Terminology, ownership structures, and document formats vary widely across Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and beyond. This lack of standardisation makes national-scale due diligence, lending, and innovation extremely difficult.

3) Poor Interdepartmental Integration

Clear property ownership cannot be determined from a single database. It requires stitching together registration data, revenue records, municipal tax systems, encumbrance and mortgage data, court cases, and even utility connections. Today, these systems operate in silos, leaving buyers without a single, unified view of risk.

Why Technology Must Build the Rails?

India has already proven that complex, nationwide problems can be solved at scale. Payments, identity, commerce, and mobility have all been transformed through digital public infrastructure combined with private innovation.

Property can-and must-be next.

Expecting the existing bureaucracy alone to design and operate world-class digital property infrastructure is unrealistic. The state’s role should be to define legal frameworks, enforce rights, and set standards. The heavy lifting, building data pipelines, verification systems, APIs, and user-facing tools, must come from specialised technology companies working alongside the government.

This public–private model is exactly what made UPI successful. Property needs a similar approach: public standards, private execution, and real-time intelligence.

Three Suggestions to Transform Property Ecosystem

Shift 1: Clean, Structured, Machine-Readable Data Most property records today exist as PDFs or scanned images. The next leap requires:

* Structured datasets that can be searched, queried, and validated

* AI-led data cleaning to detect mismatches, duplicates, and missing fields

* Digitally verifiable documents with unique IDs and audit trails

Once records become machine-readable, innovation accelerates, just as it did in banking.

Shift 2: A Common Property Data Protocol Across States India needs a shared property data language, similar to how UPI standardised payments while respecting bank autonomy. This means:

* Common terminology for ownership, encumbrances, and transactions

* Standard APIs for verified data exchange

* A uniform metadata layer enabling interoperability across states

With this in place, property due diligence could shrink from weeks to minutes.

Shift 3: A Unified, Real-Time View of Property Ownership A property is not a single record - it is a network of linked data. A modern system must integrate:

* Registration portals

* Revenue records

* Municipal tax systems

* Mortgage and encumbrance data

* Court and litigation databases

* Utility connections

When connected through APIs, these create a live, single-window view of property status.

In a mature ecosystem, every property in India should carry the equivalent of a blue tick, a verified, real-time digital profile that instantly signals title clarity and trust.

The Opportunity Ahead

India’s real estate market is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, yet the systems governing ownership verification remain decades behind. Nearly 84% of Indian household wealth is locked in real estate, often burdened by paperwork risk and legal uncertainty.

When title verification becomes instant, reliable, and low-anxiety:

- Families can protect their biggest asset

- Banks can lend more confidently

- Disputes reduce dramatically

- Developers move faster

- States unlock higher revenues through cleaner records

Digitisation, done right, is not about convenience, it is about trust.

Clear ownership does more than create wealth. It creates citizens who feel secure, invested, and confident in India’s long-term future. A transparent property system is not just economic infrastructure; it is civic infrastructure.

India has already shown the world what digital public infrastructure can achieve. Bringing the same ambition to property records could unlock the next wave of proptech innovation, and finally give every property in India the blue tick it deserves.

(Sanjay Mandava, Founder & CEO, Landeed.)

Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.