BHOOMI

Digital Land Records & Information

System

Anjali Chaudhari
UP2412

State:

Karnataka

Government to
Citizen
(G2C)
initiative
Integrated
project

of State and
Union Government
End Users/Beneficiaries:

: Silver

Awards

CAPAM award
2002

Rural People
Project Duration:

1999-

Need for a project

In the traditional system, land records were not open for
public scrutiny resulting in manipulation and favoritism.
Process for applying transfer of title was cumbersome,
time consuming, prone to harassment and also had to
pay bribe.
There were instances of Government land being illegally
transferred in the name of influential persons.
It was not possible for the administrators to procure,
collate and analyse data from the manually maintained
records.
A number of benefits were attached with successful
implementation of such projects: the sanction of crop
loans, since banks would insist on production of land
records; reducing delay in the disposal of court litigation
due to non-availability of records etc.

Project
Contain multiple data elements: ownership, tenancy, loans, nature of
title, irrigation details, crops grown
Addition to providing the proof of title to the land, this land record is
used by the farmer for a variety of purposes: from documenting crop
loans and legal actions, to securing scholarships for school-children
Records maintained manually by 9,000 village officials
Computerised kiosks are currently offering farmers two critical
services - procurement of land records and requests for changes to
land title

The Department of Revenue in Karnataka State has

computerized 20 million records of land ownership of 6.7
million farmers in the State.
Today, for a fee of Rs. 15, a printed copy of the RTC is
obtained online at computerized land record kiosks
(Bhoomi centers) in 177 taluka offices.
This

system

works

with

the

software

BHOOMI

To support the project

State level workshops and intensive trainings were
done

to

bring

changes

in

the

attitude

of

departmental staff.
Manually written Records of Right, Tenancy and
Cultivation (RTC) were declared illegal.
Union Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology announced Bhoomi to be a national
model for other states.

IT innovations
Project relies on fingerprint biometrics for
authentication of identity as well as at each stage of
any transaction relating to updation of data. This
multi layered security access looks beyond the
obvious danger of hacking of passwords and ensures
accountability at all levels with no scope for
repudiation.
To ensure that, original papers connected with the
decisions are scanned by the officials. To contain silly
litigation by people claiming that notices seeking
possible objections to change of titles were not
served on them, the notices are also scanned on to
the system.
To convince farmer of genuineness of computer
interaction, second computer screen facing him has
been provided at the kiosk. Separate touch screen

Additional services in future

Issue of land records with digital signature
Providing connectivity with Bhoomi to courts and
banks
Scanning of survey sketches/maps and linking them
with Bhoomi
Decentralization the issue of land records to Hobli
(sub taluka) level on a PPP model along with RDS
project.

Lessons learnt

Source
arc.gov.in/11threp/arc_11threport_ch4.pdf
http://nisg.org/files/documents/B17020005.pdf
http://www.bhoomi.karnataka.gov.in/landrecords
onweb/

Thank You