India Pushes Digital Shift In Urban Land Mapping

05 Dec 2025 CW Team

The Department of Land Resources (DoLR) under the Ministry of Rural Development has convened a National Symposium on NAKSHA – the National Geospatial Knowledge-based Land Survey of Urban Habitations – to advance India’s transition to modern, technology-driven land mapping.

Speaking at the inaugural session, Secretary Manoj Joshi underscored the urgent need to move revenue departments away from outdated, tape-based methods and rough hand-drawn sketches. He stressed that adopting latitude–longitude-based digital mapping and GIS-linked registration systems is essential for economic stability, stronger property markets, and transparent, reliable land records.

Providing a technical update, Joint Secretary Kunal Satyarthi noted the Government’s increasing use of advanced technologies for aerial imaging. He highlighted that the Continuously Operating Reference System (CORS) now enables surveyors to map around 200 properties a day — a task that previously consumed an entire day for a single parcel. He added that a major pilot across 157 cities is testing a unified “urban property card”, which will consolidate registration deeds, municipal tax details and existing land documents into a single authoritative record.

He further explained that technologies such as LiDAR and oblique cameras are being deployed across 20–30 states to tackle complex terrains and the challenges of rapid urbanisation.

Concluding the symposium, Director Shyam Kumar urged a coordinated push to accelerate the NAKSHA programme, develop modern GIS-based software, and ensure comprehensive national-level land datasets to improve ease of living and ease of doing business.

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