The BhoomiRashi Portal lunched on 01.04.2018 as a major e-Governance initiative of the Ministry of the Road Transport & Highways, has expedited significantly the process of land acquisition for National Highways, making it error-free & more transparent with notifications at every stage being processed on real time basis. While the physical processing of the cases usually took considerable time, ranging from weeks to even months, and there were errors whose rectification caused further delays, the processing time using this portal has been reduced to less than two weeks in a majority of cases and even a few days in some cases.

 

In 2018-19, 2920 land acquisition notifications have been issued using the portal as against an average of 1000 notifications issued yearly in the previous two years. In 21 months (from 01.04.2018 to 31.12.2019), nearly 37078 hectares of land has been notified (u/s 3D of the National Highways Act, 1956) by National Highways Authority of India as compared to 33005 hectares notified between 2014-15 to 2017-18 (four years). So far, nearly 4,16,000 number of persons have visited the portal.

 

The portal has been integrated with the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) for depositing the compensation in the account of affected/ interested persons on real-time basis. This integration has resulted in avoiding the parking of huge public funds in the account of Competent Authority for Land Acquisition. Already payments to 2111 beneficiaries, for Rs. 172,64,04,540/- has been made through PFMS in 11 states (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) using the portal.

 

The BhoomiRashi portal model is replicable and can be used by state governments as well as by Ministries which directly acquire land under their relevant legal provisions.

 

The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has launched the BhoomiRashi portal on 01.04.2018. In the past years, acquisition of land for the purpose of National Highway projects, payment of compensation to the land owners etc. were done manually by physical movement of documents in the form of files. However, in that procedure some constraints viz. delay in issuing notification, errors in the land/ area details etc. were being faced. In order to overcome these issues, to cut short delays and avoid parking of public funds with the Competent Authority for Land Acquisition (CALA), Ministry has developed a web based Utility – BhoomiRashi to fully digitize and automate the entire process of land acquisition.

 

Comprehensive details including names of 728 districts, 6763 sub-districts (tehsil/taluka) and 6,62,668 villages of the country are in-built in the system, in a simple, drop-down menu format. The details are regularly updated based on feedback from state governments. The system helps in expediting the process by providing simultaneous Hindi translation and has been linked to the e-gazette for expeditious publication. The system also provides a predefined format for preparation of 3a, 3A and 3D draft notifications as well as award calculator for issuing error-free notifications and ensuring transparency in calculating amount of compensation.

*****

RCJ/ RK

(Release ID: 1606257) Visitor Counter : 1912