460 Mouzas (villages) in the district of Rawalpindi still lack a complete revenue record, despite the Punjab government’s efforts to implement a new land registration system.
In response, the Board of Revenue has requested in writing to the deputy commissioner that the scanning of “Massavi” (details of land ownership) be finished by January 9 in order to be checked by a team visiting the district headquarters.
The BoR director reportedly stated in the letter that the Punjab Urban Land System Enhancement project was being developed for implementation by the board with support from the World Bank (WB), and that it called for the digital mapping of every Khasra in order to replace the conventional manual land maintenance method.
BoR is planning to create a land repository development exercise based on a Geographic Information System (GIS).
The letter stated that the availability of data and information regarding land records is crucial for the conversion of traditionally maintained manual accounting for land records to the digital format. The majority of the Moussavi maps that had been scanned were already available with BoR, but they did not provide a comprehensive view of the district. Therefore, a Mouza-level list needs to be created for the collection of Massavi maps that need to be scanned.
The team would visit the city on January 9 to collect the Moussavi maps, therefore the director requested the land revenue officials to store them on the office grounds.
According to sources, the government has decided to implement a new land record system in Punjab under which properties will be registered under a property number instead of Khasra, Khyut, Khatuni, etc.
They claimed that when senior BoR member Zahid Akhtar Zaman visited Rawalpindi last month, he also notified the district and divisional administration about the project’s nature.
Problems with property distribution and the inheritance will be resolved under the scheme. The provincial government has also ordered the re-creation of missing maps and information on property ownership.
According to a senior BoR official, the government wants to streamline the land revenue system and would correctly keep the record of the land from the first owner to the last through digitization.
He claimed that a separate cell had been established in the commissioner’s office to hear public complaints in order to avoid needless delays in the resolution of land-related disputes.
The commissioner’s office is where citizens may file cases without having to travel to Lahore, he claimed. He added that it is also possible to view these situations via video link.
