Villages in Kerala to be mapped through drone technology

Kerala has started the Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (SVAMITVA) to provide an integrated property validation solution for properties in rural areas through drone survey technology. The revenue department issued an order that the state government has formed a state steering committee, district monitoring, review, taluk-level committee, urban local monitoring committee, and panchayat for implementing the SVAMITVA scheme in Kerala. The revenue chief secretary, district collector, tahsildar, and panchayat president or the municipal chairperson will become the four committees at four levels in the state. Overall, the state has 1,670 villages. By drone survey technology in the villages, the property owners will get the record of rights for their properties as property cards, which would allow them to use their property as a financial asset to get financial benefits and loans from banks. The scheme includes all the villages across the country, and is implemented as a joint initiative among the Survey of India, national informatics centre, revenue department, taxes department, and survey and land records department. The Director of the survey will be the nodal officer for this project in Kerala. The project may ease the determination of property taxes for the plots, ease the maintenance and custody of government and public land parcels, and reduce property disputes. The government is undertaking other activities, such as engagement with banks to ensure recognition of property cards, to ensure that the property cards are linked to the land records of the state, ensuring that the department permits the creation of registered mortgage and sale of those lands, to create and geotag the spatial records of property with the property cards. The scheme has generated property cards for 7,376 villages in seven Indian states, including Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttrakhand. The drone survey has been completed in 54,023 villages across the country. After the drone survey, digital maps would be generated, and the respective state governments would further update the property and map data. The state government will decide the update frequency and re-survey of the data. Image Source Also read: Encroachment mapping in Aravalli to be done using drones