The Chandigarh administration is preparing to digitize the property records of the Union Territory estate office. Additionally, plans are underway to establish a digital platform that will allow both officials and allottees to track files in real-time.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been tasked with commencing the comprehensive digitization of the estate office records. Previous attempts at digitization were made in 2005, 2011, and 2021, but none succeeded in achieving complete digitization. A significant portion of the records was digitized during these earlier efforts; however, the process was not finalized due to various challenges.
The current objective is to fully digitize the records, for which a firm will be contracted to scan the necessary documents. These documents will be organized, ensuring accuracy in the digitization process, as stated by a UT official. The initiative for digitizing land records has been driven by senior officials within the Chandigarh administration, including the UT chief secretary and the secretary of estates, who are overseeing the project’s progress to enhance service delivery.
Following the completion of the digitization, the estate office intends to implement live tracking of files and allottee applications via a digital platform accessible on the estate office website and a mobile application. This live tracking feature is expected to promote transparency, improve oversight of the estate office’s operations by senior UT officials, and facilitate quicker service for allottees.
In the previous digitization efforts, some property record information, such as property resumptions, was inaccurately uploaded, but this issue has since been corrected. Furthermore, to resolve discrepancies regarding properties that were previously resumed but later reinstated through various court orders, a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was developed, leading to the correction of numerous such entries by the estate office.