The Directorate of Survey, Settlements and Land Records (DSSLR) launched a resurvey of 627 revenue villages in Andhra Pradesh (AP) as a pilot project on Monday. It divided the lands into blocks of 200 to 250 acres each and assigned the task of measuring the parcels in them, to three to four teams each. 

According to official sources, the resurvey will be done using drones in the villages which are synchronised with Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) and Ortho Rectified Images (ORI) will be generated by authorised agencies. The ground survey will commence on receipt of ORI. 

Each team will comprise two village secretaries, one village revenue officer and one village revenue assistant deputed from within the mandal/division concerned. Besides, the DSSLR has set up dedicated teams to communicate information about the resurvey, including dates and survey numbers, to villagers and attend to issues raised by aggrieved public. 

Awareness

Notices are also being sent through registered post and WhatsApp groups, and pasted on the doors of the houses. Officials have been instructed to give detailed explanations of the resurvey procedure and benefits, stress on the importance of physical presence of public during the resurvey, and to throw light on the process of accessing records on the Mee-Bhoomi website. 

The objective of the resurvey is purification of land records, for which extensive guidelines have been provided to the survey teams and Collectors and other district-level officials. 

A senior official in the DSSLR told The Hindu that the land survey was supposed to be conducted once in 30 years but it did not happen for well-known reasons including political. He stated that 65% to 80% of the records were fine and the remaining were to be reconciled. 

The resurvey would set up a platform to help clearly establish the boundaries and then the ownership of lands. This would bring down land disputes to a large extent, he observed, while pointing out that over 2.80 lakh grievances were registered in the Revenue Sadassulu held in the last seven months.