Karnataka's land database gets more cover

Officials have taken steps to make Bhoomi — the online database of the state’s land records — more secure after it was discovered that insiders were involved in an illegal land transfer in 2016. In 2016, nine acres of government land in Malur taluk of Kolar district was illegally transferred to a private individual. In July 2018, another such incident occurred when 19 acres of government land in Devanahalli taluk was transferred to a private individual. Following this incident, the police restarted investigations into two other cases as well, both of which occurred in Kolar district in 2015 and 2016. In the 2016 case, it was found to be an inside job, as a former consultant with Bhoomi and an employee who was still working at Bhoomi were responsible for the transfer. Munish Moudgil, Commissioner of Survey, Settlement and Land Records, said the primary step taken to make the database more secure was to restrict knowledge of the password to only one official in the entire state. Prior to the Devanahalli incident, several officials had the password and a new server was also installed for the database.