It has also scanned and digitised colonial-era land survey maps which will be put up online.
They form a huge and expensive chunk of real-estate in the island city on which some of the plushest housing societies, gymkhanas, offices and institutions are built. Now, as a part of land reforms, the Mumbai city collectorate is all set to put details of the leases of these prime lands in the public domain to usher in transparency and prevent illegal transactions on these lands owned by the government.
It has also scanned and digitised colonial-era land survey maps which will be put up online.
“We have scanned all these 1,391 leases and geo-tagged them on Google maps,” said Mumbai City Collector Dr Ashwini Joshi. “We have mapped the leases with their survey numbers on Google and attached lease documents to it,” she explained, adding that it would make it easy for authorities and the people to access specific leases with details of their lease and property cards.
The jurisdiction of the Mumbai city collectorate extends from Colaba to Mahim and Sion.
“This will put details of these lease property in public domain. It will prevent illegal transfers and sale and purchase (of leased plots),” noted Joshi.
She said the initiative would help reveal details of a particular survey number in the city, the name of the lease holder and rent charged and paid till the last revenue year. “Once it is foolproof, we plan to put it up on the website,” she added, stating that details of the names on the property card would also be known. The collectorate also plans to put up boards at at leased plots.
The property cards are the land records of properties in the city and are necessary while buying or selling land to check on its status. They contain details like the holders name, area, city survey number, revenue division, name of the area, rent due to the government, history, mode of acquisition and the classification of the land.
A performance audit in 2013 by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on government land given on lease in three major districts, including Mumbai city and the suburbs, had detected large-scale irregularities including non-availability of data on leased lands in the collectorates, no action being taken for eviction or renewal even after the expiry of leases and lack of data on arrears of land revenue. The report, which was submitted to the state legislature, had detected that for land given on lease by the Mumbai city collectorate, there were breaches of lease agreements, undue favours were granted through relaxations or concessions and encroachments.
Joshi said that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) had digitised around 750 of the 800 colonial-era land survey sheets. These surveys were conducted in 1893 and 1910. Putting the data in the public domain will make it easy for people to perform a background check on the property before conducting transactions.
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