Multi-phase land record digitisation project launched

Revenue minister says resettlement almost complete in Chitral

PESHAWAR:

The provincial government has launched an ambitious, multi-phased project to digitise the land records of the province.

This was disclosed on Thursday by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Revenue Minister Haji Qalandar Lodhi while addressing a news conference while flanked by the Special Assistant to the Chief Minister on Information and Higher Education Kamran Khan Bangash and Senior Member of the Board of Revenue (SMBR) Zafar Ali Shah.

While presenting the two-year performance report of his department, Lodhi said that to reform the patwari (land revenue) system, a multi-phase project on computerising land records had been launched in two phases in the province.

In the first phase, Lodhi said that the land records of seven districts will be computerised. These include Peshawar, Abbottabad, Mardan, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Bannu and Buner. In the second phase, the reforms will be extended to another 12 districts including Charsadda, Nowshera, Swabi, Haripur, Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, Battagram, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Karak and Hangu.

The minister further said that they hope to set up some 58 service delivery centres in 19 districts of the province to allow for mutation of property records and provision of fard. Of these planned centres, Lodhi said seven have started working while the rest will start operating soon.

Lodhi maintained that in Lower Chitral, resettlement work is in the final stages while in Upper Chitral, only 10% of work is left which is expected to be completed soon.

In Havelian, Nowshera and Mansehra, resettlement is almost complete while the process has just started in Malakand and that it will take around five years to complete it.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2020.