SAHIWAL: The land record digitisation of 55 per cent of mauzas has been done under a pilot project named Punjab Urban Land Systems Enhancement (PULSE) in Sahiwal district.

The pilot project is running with the financial assistance of the World Bank, and the Punjab Board of Revenue is the executing agency through the local district revenue department.

Sahiwal Assistant Commissioner (AC) Uzman Chaudhry told Dawn that the project was envisaging digital land distribution and partition by involving all hereditary owners, and under the new system, the owner of any piece of rural and urban land would be identified at once.

The World Bank website says PULSE is a $150 million project launched on Oct 22, 2022, and scheduled to be completed on June 30, 2027. The project would run across all Punjab, but its pilot had started in the Sahiwal district where 203 mauza’ hereditary land data was to be digitised in three phases. The project’s main objectives are the digitisation of rural and urban areas, formation of cadastral maps, preparation of missing records, provision of a true picture of land, facilitation to the government through land use, ascertain state land with integrated data, and safeguard state interests and Creation of unique schema numbers.

Sources informed Dawn that in Chichwatni tehsil, there are 9,696 khewat, among which 3,952 have been digitised. In Sahiwal, of 8,002 khewat, 3,221 are completed.

The focus is the scanning of all manual registries since 1947, scanning of jamabandis and inteqal registers, and scanning of all musaviees partition of all joint holdings in the district. There are 22 jamabandis in both tehsils, and all have been scanned. In the same manner, the total mussaives are 33, and all mussaives have been reconstructed and scanned.

“Total registered deeds are 127,880, and all have been scanned in Sahiwal and Chichawatni tehsil. The total mauzas in the Sahiwal district are 531, and in the pilot project, 203 mauzas would be covered in three phases, while the remaining 2,328 Mozas would be digitised later.”

Mr Chaudhry said under the new system, “one owner, one wanda” would be achieved in 203 mauzas.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2023