Court to be off-limits to litigants from 2026

The government has decided not to allow land owners to file cases with courts for land record or khatiyan-related correction from next year.
As part of the move, the Ministry of Land (MoL) has taken a measure to resolve the issues through Bangladesh Digital Survey (BDS).
The MoL also aims to dispose of millions of land-related cases pending in different courts swiftly.
At present, the land owners go to courts for correction of any land record-related information in documents based on cadastral survey ( CS) , state acquisition survey (SA), revisional survey (RS), Bangladesh Survey (BDS) and city survey.
But the new system, a set of guidelines of the MoL, will be followed from next year to resolve the any record-related dispute.
A high official at the MoL said that the new guidelines would come into effect from the very beginning of 2026, meaning that no courts will receive petitions for land record or khatiyan-related correction.
If anyone tries to file a case with a court for the purpose, the court will not accept it.
The MoL says repeated faults are being found in the previous land record systems (analogue system like CS, SA and RS records) that sometime create complications and cost a lot of time in determining the real owner of land.
To avoid such recurrence of faults in land record/ recording systems, the government has taken a move to keep the land records digitally under BDS.
The land ministry official further said that the government of Bangladesh signed a deal with a South Korean company recently for digitalising all land records under the BDS.
He said the land records under the BDS would be cent per cent flawless and thus the land owners would not need to file cases with courts for any correction in future.
He said the MoL directed the courts to dispose-of all land-related cases swiftly.
The land ministry's directives say that a plaintiff or a defendant could file a time petition for a maximum of two times in a land record correction case.
The witnesses could give their deposition in person, through email or video call or on an online platform for quick disposal of cases.
The ministry also warns that anyone filing any false case might face financial penalty and jail term.
The BDS survey is set to launch in 2026.
The land owners could raise their objection or apply to the surveyors at the field-level for land record-related correction, and thus they (land owners) no longer will need to go to court for the purpose.
Around two million civil (Dewani) cases are now pending with different courts of the country.
Of them, 70 per cent are related to land record correction.
Due to this logjam of cases, the land owners are being affected financially and at the same time the government is also being deprived of land-related taxes.
If the new guidelines of the MoL come into effect from next year, the land owners' sufferings will go permanently

talhabinhabib@yahoo.com