Bharat SainiLast Updated on February 27, 2017 by Bharat Saini
G-Triangulation is a high-impact project of Haryana Space Applications Centre (HARSAC) which has created digital maps of Gurugram (Gurgaon) to obtain a clear view of land claims. By using unmanned drones to create digital maps, Gurugram district administration has now the most accurate maps in land records in the entire India that have enabled the administration to carry out geo-referencing at the land holding or land parcel level for the first time and has helped identify errors that crept into official land department records over the years. This project has been awarded Gold under Category VI Innovative use of Geographic Information System (GIS) Technology in e-Governance for the national awards on e-Governance 2016-17.
G-Triangulation is a simple concept where at least three points are necessary to identify an area. Incidentally, a majority of these reference points established during Todarmal era had got vanished. In order to re-establish the same, a cluster of 24 satellites and 35 points of Survey of India were used.
This is for the first time that digital rights of records (jamabandis) with land holdings verified conclusively can be generated. The resolution of these maps makes them the most accurate ever used in Asia for land record management purposes. The resolution of 5 cm generated with the help of a special drone is a big improvement over the 20 cm resolution that has been used in a Singapore project.
This can be used to verify land holding, demarcate boundaries and help resolve land disputes pending in Gurugram (Gurgaon) and will assist the administration on checking on encroachments, collecting property tax, urban planning and conclusively resolving the thousands of land disputes that have burdened the legal system.
The plan is to progressively connect several government databases to this digital map, a linkage to Aadhaar numbers for example can generate land parcel IDs, that can be used to instantly verify land sale and purchase transactions. The end product could be a public website that can be a one stop shop before any land transaction. The project has the potential of attracting industry as well which can access the digital database to plan a production hub with adequate available land, transport links, resources and expansion potential.
For a country where land is at premium and often is in the middle of business and personal feuds, India has an antiquated method of measuring and recording it depending largely on painstaking ground surveys and decades old maps in which errors have amplified by both commission and omission. The above new initiative hopes to reverse this, creating what are perhaps the most accurate maps in Asia that can be used to verify land holding, demarcate boundaries and help resolve land disputes pending in Gurugram (Gurgaon).
