Bengal one of the top performers in land record digitalisation in India

Kolkata: Setting another milestone, Bengal comes up as the second best state in the country in terms of digitisation of land records.

The second edition of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) Land Record Services Index (N-LRSI), which was recently released, shows that Bengal

has climbed four levels compared to that of the first edition to stand second among all states in the country.

N-LRSI 2019-20 was formulated by the NCAER Land Policy Initiative (LPI) to gauge the extent of digitisation of land records and services and the improvement in the quality of the record as a result of the digitisation process.

The first edition of the

Index was released on February 27 in 2020.

In N-LRSI 2019-20, Bengal's score was 61.8 out of 100. With a "change in score of 16.7", in the second edition

Bengal's N-LRSI score is 78.5 out of 100.

Madhya Pradesh is only ahead of Bengal with a score of 80.2 out of 100 while states including Odisha, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kerala

and Assam.

Bengal has received more score than Madhya Pradesh, that ranked first,

in maintaining textual record

(record of rights), spatial records (Cadastral Maps) and registration with 19.7, 18.8 and

18.9 out of 20 each respectively. But Bengal failed to secure rank 1 as it scored 21.1 out of 40 in "quality of land records" in which Madhya Pradesh

scored 27.9.

The report also revealed that "the mean score of all states or union territories for all aspects of digitisation has increased to 29.6 points out of 60 in N-LRSI 2020-21 from the 24.6

points recorded in N-LRSI 2019-20".

There are states like Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Punjab scored something between 25 to 50. While Delhi, Kerala, Assam, Sikkim has scored even below 25, the

report shows.

A state government official has said that digitisation of land records is a priority sector for the state government and the remaining part will be covered at the earliest.