On February 18 2025, Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoA&FW) inaugurated the National Geospatial Knowledge-based Land Survey of Urban Habitations (NAKSHA) to create a modernize land records in 152 urban local bodies (ULBs) across 26 States and 3 Union Territories (UTs) in India.
- The inaugural session of NAKSHA took place in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh (MP). The project was also launched in several locations, including Dindigul, Thanjavur, and Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu (TN), Puducherry, and Bogadi in Karnataka.
- The NAKSHA program aims to create and update land records in urban areas, ensuring precise and trustworthy documentation of land ownership.
Key people:
The inaugural session was attended by Union Minister of State(MoS) Dr. Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, MoRD and Ministry of Communications(MoC); Manoj Joshi, Secretary of DoLR, MoRD, Mohan Yadav, Chief Minister (CM) of MP; Karan Singh Verma, Revenue Minister of MP; Prahlad Singh Patel, Minister for Panchayati Raj and Rural Development of MP; Narayan Singh Pawar, Minister of State (MoS) for Fisheries and Fishermen welfare, MP; and others dignitaries
About NAKSHA:
i.The program aims to ensure accurate and up-to-date urban land records, empowering citizens and improving urban planning.
- It is expected to cost around Rs. 194 crore, fully funded by the Government of India (GoI).
ii.It is a pilot program under the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) of the Department of Land Resources (DoLR), MoRD.
- DILRMP(erstwhile National Land Record Modernization Programme), which has been operational since 2016-17 with 100% funding by the Government of India(GoI) and is set to continue until March 2026.
iii.This one-year pilot program will be carried out with Dehradun(Uttarakhand) based Survey of India (SoI) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science & Technology(MoS&T) as the technical partner, responsible for aerial surveys and providing corrected images to state and UT governments through third-party vendors.
iv.The MP State Electronic Development Corporation (MPSEDC) will create a comprehensive web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) platform, with storage managed by New Delhi(Delhi) based National Informatics Centre Services Incorporated (NICSI) under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY).
v.The program will use drones for geospatial mapping and to create accurate property records. The data will be linked to the property tax records of local bodies, with advanced survey devices used to create the maps.
vi.Property owners can raise objections to the field maps generated. After reviewing these objections, the final land records will be released. Once the process is done, owners will receive integrated property records.
