Digitalizing land registration and administration
Thursday, 4 November 2010
THE disputes over land involve the greatest number of civil and criminal cases in the country. Litigation over land claims and ownerships and related incidents keep the greater part of the capacities of the country's legal system engaged. The amounts drained by litigants in such land-related hassles are also very great. Furthermore, the country's land registration system is mostly corruption-ridden. This was rightly noted by Finance Minister AMA Muhith while inaugurating the Bangladesh Computer Society (BCS)-Information Communication Technology (ICT) World Fair-2010 in Dhaka on October 30.
A great deal of precious resources as well as energy and time both by individuals and the legal system would have been saved if the problems of land-related disputes and hassles and graft related with land registration could have been effectively addressed. But that requires upgrading of land administration which means keeping, using and retrieving land-related various records and land transfer-related registration deeds.
Presently, such records or registrations are kept or done in primitive conditions by today's global standards. Leaking roofs in ill-maintained record rooms destroy hand-written records of decades ago from wetting and dampening. Besides, the present mode of keeping the records provides lucrative opportunities to their keepers in wasting time in the name of searching for them and also to tamper with them for pecuniary gains. The media reported recently how records even disappear from record rooms or falsified records are authenticated and given in response to bribes to unscrupulous record room keepers.
In fact, the entire system of land recording and registration and using the same is shot through with scopes for corruption and taking of bribes at every step. Surveys to determine land ownership are carried out at very long intervals but the final records are not made available promptly. Thus, the results of such surveys carried out soon after the independence of Bangladesh are in some cases yet to be finally published and titles to property declared against the new owners properly from changes of ownership due to sale or inheritance. For example, the Dhaka City Survey from the land office was carried out more than a decade ago. Its results were published and circulated. But it is not being enforced on flimsy grounds. So, why was this survey conducted anyway? This situation provides the opportunity to land office and other related officials to demand for mutation in each case of registration and they make money under the table from providing such dubious mutation certificates that in turn understandably lead to many litigations later on. But all of these scopes for bribery and paving the way for litigations can be avoided from timely completion of survey and publication and enforcement of their results at the fastest.
Only a digitalized or computerized manner of keeping land records and registration of related transfer documents for all categories of users can be the effective solution to many crimes, corruption and troubles faced in this area. But the digitalization process is crawling on, to say the most. This has also been admitted by the Finance Minister.
Clearly, the outmoded processes need to give way to complete digitalization at the soonest. A comprehensive plan should be prepared for the purpose and funds placed and utilized at an early date for the plan to take off in the full sense of the term. This is really a developmental issue of significance and the country can only go on foot-dragging in this vital area by paying a higher and higher price in different ways.
A great deal of precious resources as well as energy and time both by individuals and the legal system would have been saved if the problems of land-related disputes and hassles and graft related with land registration could have been effectively addressed. But that requires upgrading of land administration which means keeping, using and retrieving land-related various records and land transfer-related registration deeds.
Presently, such records or registrations are kept or done in primitive conditions by today's global standards. Leaking roofs in ill-maintained record rooms destroy hand-written records of decades ago from wetting and dampening. Besides, the present mode of keeping the records provides lucrative opportunities to their keepers in wasting time in the name of searching for them and also to tamper with them for pecuniary gains. The media reported recently how records even disappear from record rooms or falsified records are authenticated and given in response to bribes to unscrupulous record room keepers.
In fact, the entire system of land recording and registration and using the same is shot through with scopes for corruption and taking of bribes at every step. Surveys to determine land ownership are carried out at very long intervals but the final records are not made available promptly. Thus, the results of such surveys carried out soon after the independence of Bangladesh are in some cases yet to be finally published and titles to property declared against the new owners properly from changes of ownership due to sale or inheritance. For example, the Dhaka City Survey from the land office was carried out more than a decade ago. Its results were published and circulated. But it is not being enforced on flimsy grounds. So, why was this survey conducted anyway? This situation provides the opportunity to land office and other related officials to demand for mutation in each case of registration and they make money under the table from providing such dubious mutation certificates that in turn understandably lead to many litigations later on. But all of these scopes for bribery and paving the way for litigations can be avoided from timely completion of survey and publication and enforcement of their results at the fastest.
Only a digitalized or computerized manner of keeping land records and registration of related transfer documents for all categories of users can be the effective solution to many crimes, corruption and troubles faced in this area. But the digitalization process is crawling on, to say the most. This has also been admitted by the Finance Minister.
Clearly, the outmoded processes need to give way to complete digitalization at the soonest. A comprehensive plan should be prepared for the purpose and funds placed and utilized at an early date for the plan to take off in the full sense of the term. This is really a developmental issue of significance and the country can only go on foot-dragging in this vital area by paying a higher and higher price in different ways.