The President of India will present the “Bhoomi Samman” 2023 on Tuesday,18th July, 2023 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi to 9 State Secretaries and 68 District Collectors along with their teams who have excelled in achieving saturation of the core components of Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) – the core of Governance. Shri Giriraj Singh, Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj stated that this event is extremely significant for Revenue and Registration functionaries of the State who would receive the “Bhoomi Samman” for the first time in the last 75 years for their outstanding performance. This would be the landmark year for institutionalizing the “Bhoomi Samman”.

Shri Giriraj Singh, further stated that the “Bhoomi Samman” Scheme is a fine example of Centre-State cooperative federalism based on trust and partnership, as the grading system is largely based on reports and inputs of the States/UTs in the core components of computerization and digitization of land records.

Shri Singh added that Digitization process of land records and registration will help mitigate the huge pendency of court cases involving land disputes cutting down the GDP loss to the country’s economy due to projects being stalled over litigation involving land disputes. He emphasized that land records related information can be very useful and effective for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of various services and benefits of the programmes of Central and State Government Departments like Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, Chemical and Fertilizer, Public Distribution System (PDS), Panchayati Raj and Financial Institutions, etc. The effectiveness in delivery of services to aforesaid Departments /Agencies / Ministries depends upon the uniformity, inter-operability, compatibility for sharing of land records related information among different stakeholders.

Shri Giriraj Singh, informed that the Department of Land Resources has achieved 94% digitization targets pan-India and is resolutely targeting to achieve 100% saturation of the core components of digitization of land records in all the Districts of the country by 31^st March 2024.

Background:

Prime Minister had envisioned in the Post-Budget Webinar on 23^rd February 2022 that all public welfare schemes should saturate the scheme components with the objective that no citizen is left behind. In the Council of Ministers’ meeting on 3^rd July 2023, the Prime Minister had reiterated the imminent need for saturation of scheme components. As a step in this direction, this Department had initiated performance based grading in six core components of DILRMP. The grading has been done on the basis of performance of Districts as reflected in Management Information System (MIS) of DILRMP and as reported by the State/UT Governments. Platinum Grading is given to the Districts which have completed saturation i.e. 100% targets in the respective core components of DILRMP. The 9 State Secretaries and 68 District Collectors of the aforesaid Districts will be presented with “Bhoomi Samman” recognizing their efforts in achieving outstanding performance as above.

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SS