According to Maharashtra settlement commissioner NK Sudhanshu, the state would finish drone-based mapping of rural residential land parcels by March this year to define the boundaries of villages, private, government, and semi-government properties, as well as the locations of highways and canals. Last year, the Union government gave the Maharashtra land records department, which reports to the settlement commissioner's office, 25 drones to help speed up the land survey project, which was established to create accurate land records for rural planning and minimise property disputes. “Mapping was earlier carried out manually. However, the drone technology is now changing the way this massive exercise was undertaken,” Sudhanshu said. Property cards for these locations, according to officials, will be ready by December 2024. Under the Svamitva initiative, the project began in Sonori village in Purandar tehsil in Pune district in 2018 with the goal of providing integrated property validation for rural India. Despite the two-year Covid timeframe, 35,115 communities were covered by the initiative last year, including 31,787 villages where drone technology was deployed. “Now, just 3,328 villages are remaining, which will be covered by March 2023,” said an official involved in the exercise. As many as 4,733 property card data of these rural villages have been generated on the Mahabhumi website, the official said, adding that the estimated beneficiary count in the state was 990,000 and the property cards had been generated for 716,000. “Through this scheme, the government resolves to enable economic progress in rural India by providing a ‘record of rights’ to every rural household. This is planned to be achieved using drone and continuously operating reference station technology for capturing images,” said a central official.