A daunting task is ahead for the revenue, land survey, and panchayat staff till July next year to complete a comprehensive re-survey in Kurnool and Anantapur districts that have 919 and 965 revenue villages respectively. As a pilot project on resurvey has begun in Pandipadu village of Kallur mandal in Kurnool district and Kothapalli village of Somandepalli mandal in Anantapur district.
The first phase of the entire re-survey has begun with the help of drones and Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). On the ground, white lines are drawn on the boundaries of each land and house property with the help of chalk/lime powder, which helps the Survey of India’s drone to capture the right coordinates and create digital imagery which is sent to their Hyderabad office, where it is processed within a maximum of 14 hours and sent back to that particular village.
On the ground 1,500 village surveyors will help the Survey of India complete the work in Anantapur district, Joint Collector Nishant Kumar has told The Hindu. Initially, this process will be replicated in one village in each revenue division of the district and then one district per mandal to get the data for 311 villages in the first phase by July 2021. The three-phase exercise is scheduled to be completed by January 2023, an exercise being taken up after 100 years.
Appellate mechanism
A 14-digit unique ID is generated with each land parcel that is digitised and the ground staff does ground proofing through physical verification. In case of any dispute, a mobile magistrate is available on hand in the village, headed by a mandal-level officer and issue is settled then and there. "Appellate mechanism is being worked out and will be notified soon if a dispute is not resolved at the magistrate level," Mr. Nishant has observed.
Benefits of the resurvey include accurate field measurements, unique identification number for each landholder, fixation of field stones for each land parcel, permanent rights to each landholder, a map for each land parcel, and registration facility at village level.
In Kurnool district, 8.34 lakh pattadars will be covered with 10.39 lakh hectares of agricultural land and in 973 panchayaths, 8.34 lakh properties will be surveyed. Similarly, 2.63 lakh properties and 1.18 lakh plots in 10 municipalities will be covered. The first phase has 207 survey numbers with a total extent of 1,469.44 land Acs, belonging to 1,216 owners. While in Anantapur, in the first phase 56 survey numbers are involved with 359 Acs, all the owners will get permanent land documents guaranteed by the State government.