By Altaf Hussain Janjua

Jammu, Sep 4 (IANS): Just like one has a copy of one's bank account, ration card or passport, now every citizen in Jammu and Kashmir will have a copy of their land information available.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Revenue Department has started the process of issuing passbooks to all land owners.

In this passbook, the information of account number, khasra number, land type, land owner, cultivator, gender, etc., will be available and the land owners will make an entry on the same copy after every six months. If one wants to sell the land, take a loan or benefit from any other government scheme, this passbook will be used.

On Saturday, grand functions were organised at the government level to distribute Land Passbook to the land owners in all the districts of Jammu province. The most important function was held at Convention Center, Jammu presided over by Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha.

Under this historic decision, the Revenue Department has issued trilingual land passbooks in Urdu, Hindi and English to the land owners. In this passbook, all the details of the land found with the land owner and the nature of deposit in the revenue estate are recorded. The land passbook record maintained by the Revenue department will also be online and the zamindar can prepare his passbook online without visiting any patwari or tehsildar or any revenue office. Scanning and digitization of land records has already been started for the convenience of the citizens and under the initiative of the government for a better system.

This decision will also give relief to the people from the exploitation of the Patwaris who had to pay a lot of money to get the copies of the land records. With this decision, the revenue department, which is notorious in Jammu and Kashmir for bribery, will be brought under control to a large extent. This move will also make the dream of Digital Indian a reality.