Maharashtra cabinet approves drone survey for land ownership in 40,000 villages

The Maharashtra cabinet on Tuesday approved a Rs373-crore proposal for a drone-based survey of 40,000 villages across the state to provide ownership titles. This comes in the wake of the success of the drone survey done on a pilot basis at Soneri village in Pune’s Puranadartaluka last year. Officials from the state settlement commissionerate and land records department said the same model will now be replicated across Maharashtra. “This will be beneficial for crores of house owners in villages who had to depend only on tax documents. The drone survey of all the 40,000 villages will be a fresh exercise and the biggest once since independence,” settlement commissioner of land records S Chockalingam said. Within a month of using the drones as part of the pilot project, the settlement commissionerate was able to issue accurate property cards to 380 people at Soneri. It had also issue “sanad”, an agreement with the government, with maps demarcating property on these land with clean titles.