Guwahati, Feb 1 : In sync with the emphasis laid on technology-driven land administration in Sixth Schedule areas, the Assam government, Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) and Survey of India signed a tripartite MoU to extend the SVAMITVA (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas) scheme to KAAC.
The scheme will cover the rural-inhabited areas through drone surveys followed by generation of GIS maps to enable detailed spatial database of properties with a view to providing property cards to owners for leveraging land as financial assets.
The agreement was signed by Gyanendra Dev Tripathi, director of Land Records and Surveys, Assam on behalf of the Assam government; Mukul Kumar Saikia, principal Secretary, KAAC on behalf of KAAC; and Rohit Agrawal, Superintending Surveyor, Assam and Nagaland, Geo-Spatial Data Centre on behalf of Survey of India.
Assam chief secretary Jishnu Barua and Alok Prem Nagar, joint secretary, Union ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR), along with senior officers of revenue and disaster management department, Survey of India and deputy commissioners of the Autonomous Council districts attended the MoU signing ceremony through video conference.
The signing of the MoU is yet another momentous step towards technology driven mainstreaming of land revenue management in the autonomous council areas of Assam where land is a transferred subject.
A similar MoU was inked between the state government, Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) and the Survey of India on December 28 last year for extending the SVAMITVA scheme to Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR).
Giving his views, Union joint secretary (MoPR) Nagar emphasised on streamlining the land records system of autonomous councils and hoped to bring all autonomous councils of Northeastern region within the ambit of SVAMITVA soon.
Stating that the agreement will be the genesis of surveying large tracts of unsurveyed areas, Assam chief secretary Barua expressed hope that the North Cachar Autonomous Council would also come forward given the positive environment created by signing of MoU recently with BTC and now with KAAC.
Mukul Kumar Saikia, principal secretary, KAAC noted that the occasion was a pivotal opportunity for the council as it would pave the way for rolling out a credible land records management system by undertaking large-scale mapping of the huge unsurveyed areas.
With the increase in the ambit of the scheme in the state, rural areas are expected to attain holistic socio-economic empowerment based on credible property rights which will be the stepping-stone towards making villages self-reliant.