NEWS – Karnataka Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda has launched the ‘Bhu Suraksha’ programme in Bengaluru Urban district.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The initiative aims to digitise land records and provide transparent, tamper-proof access to land ownership data.
• A key goal is to curb fraudulent land transactions and break the stronghold of the land mafia in the state.

Why the Programme Was Needed

• Land-related frauds have been rampant in and around Bengaluru due to manipulated or falsified land documents.
• Consequences of such irregularities:
  • Loss of public land to private encroachers.
  • Government losing legal cases due to forged papers.
  • Public assets being grabbed by land sharks under false claims.

Implementation Plan

• The digitisation process commenced at the Bengaluru Urban Deputy Commissioner’s office.
• Daily operations:
  • 10,000 pages are being scanned each day across tahsildar offices.
• Timeline:
  • All tahsildar office records will be digitised by December 2025.
  • Assistant Commissioner (AC) office records to be digitised by March 2026.

Scale of the Project

• Karnataka stores a massive 100 crore pages of land-related documents.
  • 35.36 crore pages have been digitised.
  • 35 crore pages are pending.
• Scanning will soon extend to AC and Deputy Commissioner (DC) offices, ensuring district-wide coverage.

Public Access and Benefits

• Digitised records will be accessible via:
  • recordroom.karnataka.gov.in
  • Nearest Nada Kacheri (revenue) offices
• Expected Benefits:
  • Protect farmers and landowners from middlemen and bureaucratic exploitation.
  • Improve transparency, efficiency, and citizen access to land records.
  • Already, over 4 lakh documents have been delivered digitally to the public.