https://indianmasterminds.com

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Combating Land Mafia with Technology

Former Muzaffarnagar District Collector Selva Kumari’s initiative towards digitalizing the land records of the area will immensely help in preventing fraudulent activities of the land mafias. This is expected to solve a very old and recurring problem in the district.
Indian Masterminds Stories

With a shift towards modernized era and penetration of social media in the country, a parallel change has emerged in the functioning of the public administrators. Increasingly, they are making use of digital technology for the betterment of people.

Ms. Selva Kumari J., former DM of Muzaffarnagar in Western Uttar Pradesh, is one such officer. It won’t be wrong to say that she has emerged as a `technology warrior’.

Soon after coming to Muzaffarnagar, she discovered an overwhelmingly large number of land disputes and duplicity of land documents. She decided to take the bull by the horn.

Thanks to the efforts by Ms. Selva, the software ‘Dhara’ (Earth) is being officially launched on 14 January 2020, which is also the day when Makar Sankranti (a Hindu festival) is being celebrated throughout the country.

According to the sources, this software will help fight the long-running land disputes and the illegal occupation of the land mafias in the Muzaffarnagar district. This indeed had become a major issue for several bureaucrats who served in the district. A solution eluded everyone all this while, until Ms. Selva thought of digitalizing the data of all the land packets in the district.

THE IDEA

The main issue which was being faced was that a single land was being used in the government document under various categories. People buying a piece of land were not aware that if the land was legally available to be sold or not. That is when the land mafias were taking advantage. Even the court cases of the disputed land were not recorded anywhere which was becoming an obstacle for the administrators to resolve the issue.

This is when Ms. Selva took help of a private company to build a GIS (Geographic information system) software for which she claimed that no illegal occupation would take place once the software is implemented completely. The software took around two months to build, despite having some delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic and will be soon available on Google Play Store.

Let’s find out how the administration is working on implementing the software in the district.

IMPLEMENTING DHARA

According to the plan, the implementation of the software will be conducted in three phases. At first, with the help of the GIS software, an ID and password is being created for all the village revenue officers (Lekhpals) in the district. The id and password will ensure that a revenue officer will only have access to the lands in his designated village. Also, these revenue officers have been assigned the duty of feeding the title, plot number column and the colour coding of all the landholdings in his village into the system.

Colour coding of land being done in the first phase

In the second phase, the masterplan of the Muzaffarnagar Development Authority (MDA) is being integrated into the software. Through this, people will easily identify if the land is under the MDA or is in the green belt. The green belt is the area where people can do farming activities, but cannot undertake any construction work. There are around 100 villages under the MDA.

Identifying the land

Till now, the Muzaffarnagar administration was not aware of all the cases of disputed land which were being heard in civil courts or the High Court. To overcome this, a feature was added to the software. Now officials can access all such disputes pending in various courts. This will help the officials in obtaining prior knowledge about a disputed land and the cases which are being heard for a particular piece of land.

Import Feature

EMPOWERING THE PEOPLE

Another important feature of the software is that provide public access to limited government data (limiting it to 1 km of their location) to prevent any wrong transaction and misuse of the application. Any person who wants to check the status of a particular land, has to be in a radius of one kilometer from the land.

The first two phases have been completed and the third process is under process, which will be completed before the official launch of the software. Once all the information is fed into the system, the app will freeze and only the District Magistrate will have the access to make changes in the records.


Indian Masterminds Stories
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Related Stories
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
NEWS
Bihar Government-resized-IM
From Schemes to Services: Bihar Nears 100% Completion of Ambedkar Seva Abhiyan with 92% Camps Held
nitish cabinet
Bihar Sees Investment Momentum: 75% of Business Connect MoUs Begin Implementation, ₹82,584 Cr in Play
CM Vishnu Deo Sai - resized
Tech-Powered Governance: From Village to Cloud, Chhattisgarh Leads Digital Transformation Under CM Vishnu Deo Sai
Indian Bureaucracy News Latest
IAS Ramesh Verma Takes Charge of DSSSB, IAS Priyank Kishore Moves to Gujarat Cadre
IAS Officers Indian Administrative Services (IAS)
38 IAS Officers to Retire in June 2025 Across Multiple Cadres - Check the Names Here
Madras Highcourt
Madras High Court Issues Contempt Notices to Five IAS Officers, HR&CE Official Over Temple Land Case
jharkhand logo-resized
New hope for the disabled: Jharkhand government started assistance of ₹ 1,000 every month
Mohan Yadav CM MP
Massive Hiring Drive in MP: MPPSC Recruits 3,756 Candidates During Dr. Mohan Yadav's Tenure, Over 5,000 More Posts in Process
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Videos
WhatsApp Image 2025-06-25 at 5.07
Why Has the DGCA Fined Air India Rs 5 Crore Since Privatisation?
Former Diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar
Iran Is Weakest Now, Needs a Face-Saver
WhatsApp Image 2025-06-23 at 12.39
Retired Officers Lead 7-Day Mission to Revive Betwa River with 55 Check Dams | Video Interview
ADVERTISEMENT
UPSC Stories
Sanish Kumar Singh
“If you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way,” Sanish Kumar Singh AIR 8, UPSC IFS 2024 
The real interview, he says, was much more humane. “The board was conversational. The chairman opened...
Raju Wagh
When the Battlefield Became a Study Room and a Dream Took Flight
Amid IED blasts and anti-Maoist operations in Bastar, CRPF Commando Raju Wagh taught village kids, studied...
WhatsApp Image 2025-06-18 at 10.31
"I Just Wanted to Breathe Again": The Man Who Fought Death and Made It to UPSC
Struck by COVID at the peak of his UPSC prep, Devanand Telgote spent months on ECMO, unsure he'd live,...
Social Media
Tigress Arrowhead
The End of an Era: A Queen Falls - Ranthambore’s Iconic Tigress Arrowhead (T-84) Passes Away at 14, Hours After Daughter’s Relocation
Ranthambore mourns the loss of one of its fiercest and most beloved tigers, Arrowhead, the granddaughter...
Screenshot 2025-06-13 194001
Wild Elephant Disrupts Riverside Picnic, Sparks Debate on Human Encroachment; IFS Parveen Kumar Shares the Video - Watch Here!
Mr. Kaswan used the viral video, which has garnered over 1.5 lakh views, to highlight the risks of human...
Tiger jump Sundarban
Stunning Viral Video Shows Royal Bengal Tiger Making Spectacular 30-Foot Leap Across River in Sunderbans - See It Here
Retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Susanta Nanda shared the clip online, which quickly went...
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Latest
Bihar Government-resized-IM
From Schemes to Services: Bihar Nears 100% Completion of Ambedkar Seva Abhiyan with 92% Camps Held
nitish cabinet
Bihar Sees Investment Momentum: 75% of Business Connect MoUs Begin Implementation, ₹82,584 Cr in Play
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Videos
WhatsApp Image 2025-06-25 at 5.07
Former Diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar
WhatsApp Image 2025-06-23 at 12.39
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT