Irked at the snail pace of its ambitious two-decade-old programmes of computerisation and upgradation of the land records across the country, the Centre has cracked the whip. It has directed the State Governments to refund the unspent amount of over Rs 223 crore to the exchequer and made it a pre-condition for the release of funds under the new scheme — National land Records Modernisation Programme (NlRMP) launched in 2008.
The Centre had released funds worth Rs 1,061.97 crore for the schemes namely Computerisation of land Records (ClR) and Strengthening of Revenue Administration and Updating of land Records (SRA & UlR) since their inception in 1988-89. However, till date they are yet to fully utilise the fund with Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and Uttarakhand being the worst performers.
They have spent just one-third of the total fund they received till date under the centrally sponsored scheme aimed to ensure ‘on-line management’ of land records in the country. Prabhat Kumar Sarangi, Joint Secretary with the Department of land Resources of the Rural Development Ministry said that it has been decided that the unspent balance lying with States/UTs in the two schemes may be refunded to the Government through demand draft.
“This may be done urgently in order to release the funds in respect of NRlMP as it is a pre-condition imposed by the Finance Division of the Department,” the official said in its letter to the Revenue Ministers of the States recently.
According to the data of the Union Rural Development Ministry, under the Centrally sponsored scheme of Computerisation of land Records, a total amount of Rs 586.61 crore was released to all the States since the inception of the scheme. However, the States could utilise only Rs 473.52 crore and an amount of Rs 11.08 crore is lying as unspent balance.
Similarly, under the Centrally sponsored scheme of Strengthening of Revenue Administration and Updating of land Records, an amount of Rs 475.36 crore was released to the States. Against this amount, Rs 365.57 crore was utilised and an amount of Rs 109.78 crore is lying as unspent balance. Gujarat, Arunanchal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir are the only States which have not submitted utilisation certificates since 2008 while 19 States have not submitted the certificates since 2010 for computerisation of the land records.
However, eight States including Bihar, Nagaland, Kerala, Haryana, Meghalaya have performed comparatively exceptionally well utilising the entire fund made available to them. NlRMP is an integrated programme aimed at modernising management of land records, minimise the scope of land/property disputes and enhance transparency in land records maintenance system.