JAMMU, DEC 14: J&K’s Chief Secretary, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta has directed the Revenue Department to roll out trilingual land passbooks – in Urdu, Hindi and English – as a measure to fill the information vacuum and promote people’s ease of access to the revenue record, an official handout issued on Wednesday said.
The first-of-its-kind land passbook will be issued to the legal owners of land in Jammu and Kashmir in Urdu, English, and Hindi languages.
Under the Digital India Land Record Modernization Programme (DILRMP), the Revenue Department has scanned voluminous revenue records and placed them in the public domain under the ‘Apni Zameen Apni Nigrani’ for people’s scrutiny. Over three lakh and twenty-five thousand visitors have already visited the site in the last 6 weeks, the official said.
Some legal experts have raised concerns on this process arguing that such a move could compromise right to privacy of land owners.
“To have a systematic transparency and to put all information in public domain about ownership are two different things. Transparency of system to know legal land ownership may be a good thing, but when you put all information in public domain, it can jeopardise right to privacy and even safety of people. Someone has to do a proper Judicial review of this process whether it conforms with the country’s legal and constitutional framework”, a leading legal expert based in Jammu told Ziraat Times.
Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary has directed the Department to evolve a mechanism of issuing revenue passbooks to the people, containing information on all their legal land possessions within one month for formal issuance by 26th January 2022.
The process will be completed in the districts of Jammu and Srinagar by 31st March 2022 and in all other districts by 15th August 2022.
