The Department of Revenue & Land Reforms, Government of Bihar has brought valuable information for residents of state online in its website http://lrc.bih.nic.in/. Now the residents of Bihar can check their land records in the official website of department of Revenue & Land Reforms. Internet savvy people owning land in nine districts of Bihar don't have to run from pillar to post for their updated land records. As of now the land records of nine of the 38 districts have been put online that include Kishanganj, Katihar, Darbhanga, Madhubani, Bhagalpur, Bhojpur, Buxar, Rohtas and Muzaffarpur. The remaining districts' records would be made online by December-end said the officials of the Bihar revenue and land reforms department.
The website launched in the last week of August 2012 has already received more than 1 lakh visits and comments of landowners on our website. The department officials said that they have received appreciating comments from Bihari residing across the globe including New York in the United States of America. Further the official said that last time any major survey had been conducted was the cadastral survey of 1905. The revisional survey was started in the 1960s after the government abolished zamindari in 1950 and passed the land ceiling Act, but not all the districts were covered. Besides, both the 1905 and revisional surveys were faulty.
The official mentioned this time the revisional survey would update records of all kinds of land, both government and private. Revisional survey maps of land would also be prepared after their aerial photography using hybrid survey methodology (HSM). According to him, the aerial survey is being conducted by letting an aeroplane, fitted with digital geo-positioning system (DGPS) and other equipment at its bottom, fly at a certain height.
The photographs of land so taken are verified and matched with available land maps and data procured through land survey. The margin of error in the aerial photography has been found to be minimal. Accordingly, digitization of 14,672 revenue maps of Bhojpur, Buxar, Rohtas and Kaimur districts, as well as 1,152 such maps of Musahari block of Muzaffarpur district, are complete, and the process for their uploading on the department's website has also started.
When the updated land records, along with their digitized revenue maps, of all the 38 districts are put online, it would help people in getting soft copies of land possession certificate (LPC) and mutation certificate of land within shortest legally prescribed time. Moreover, since every circle office would be linked to the registration department through computers, if a person sells a land to a person and it is registered in the name of the purchaser, then the former cannot resell or re-register it in the name of any other person. The process regarding updating of land records, preparation of the digitized maps of land and their uploading pertaining to all the districts would be completed by 2015 said the official.
