NITI Aayog Making Draft Model Land Title Act, 2019

Highlights:

• Digital land records will help the move
• The draft law will aim that states move from presumptive to conclusive system
• The unified legal framework being finalised to allow govt-backed land ownership

The govt is making a draft model Land Title Act, 2019 which will pave the way for conclusive land titles as against assumptive ones at present. Apart from that, the govt is also working on a unified legal framework that will give for state-guaranteed land ownership.

Conclusive land titles are guaranteed by the state for their accuracy and require provision for compensation by the state in case of any conflicts. Guaranteed title systems have been developed and used in countries such as Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

As per the sources, the government is interested to start for conclusive land titling as it will encourage easy access of credit to farmers and lessen a large number of land-related lawsuits. Apart from that, it will enable transparent real estate transactions and land acquisition for infrastructure development.

A recently held meeting by the cabinet secretary to suggest views from stakeholders, including central ministries, on how to make the law attractive enough for states to utilise it as whole. As land is a state matter, all states will have to come on board to pick the model law.

Succeeding to the meeting, the NITI Aayog has been maintaining meetings with all stakeholders on the draft law. “This will shortly be achieved and presented to states for confirmation, sources added. Even though various efforts were made in the past to shift towards conclusive land titling, the plans could never be started within.

In India, land ownership is determined through various records such as sale deeds, property tax receipts, and survey documents. The govt is of the view that massive progress in computerisation of land records will benefit in leading towards conclusive land titles.

The govt has achieved more than 90% digitisation of land records under the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Program of the Department of Land Resources under the rural development ministry. Land records across the country have been computerised in 5,91,221 villages out of the identified 6,55,959 villages.

Sources: ET