July 24, 2006	Monday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 27, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, July 23: A task given to the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) to computerise land and revenue record in Islamabad is facing resistance from the capital city’s bureaucracy, Dawn learnt on Sunday.

A Nadra source said the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Administration were not extending “sincere cooperation” in carrying out the task assigned by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

The prime minister had desired that the computerisation of land and revenue record should begin as a pilot project with the Agricultural Farm House Scheme in which he and President Pervez Musharraf also own farms.

Work on replacing the centuries-old land record system with the easily accessible and transparent computerised records was to start on April 15 but it could not till this day. The CDA argues right conditions do not exist for launching the project and the ICT administration is equally non-cooperative, according to the source.

Under the project the record of land of Islamabad’s urban area was to be computerised by the CDA and that of rural area by the ICT administration.

Prime Minister Aziz wanted the outdated system of manual Fard (documentary evidence of land ownership) to be replaced by computerised Fard and signed by the concerned officer of land and revenue department, the source said.

The prime minister directed the CDA and ICT administration that people seeking Fards should not be exploited by Patwaris and land and revenue officers.

The source said Nadra had informed a meeting held in the National Reconstruction Bureau that it had formed a software to computerise the land record but the CDA and ICT were not providing the required data.

When contacted, a senior official of the Capital Development Authority told Dawn that the project of computerisation would be a futile exercise unless the whole system in the CDA and the ICT was computerised.

“If the computerised Fard requires the signature of Patwari, it cannot be called full fledge computerisation because it would retain the dominance of the Patwari in the system,” the official said.

He said the purposes of computerisation of land record would be served only when the computerised Fard was taken to be authentic without requiring the signature of Patwari or any other officer.