5.3 Stamp Duty Payment

Box 8.2: Illustrations of Accessibility Issues Faced during the Test-Checks

1. The State of Rajasthan reported the following issues: i) One of the tehsils, ‘Baitu’, was being counted in Bharatpur district by the DoLR website, whereas in reality, this tehsil belongs to Barmer district; ii) In Bhilwara district, the sample villages as recorded in the Sahara tehsil were found in Raipura tehsil of the same district; iii) In the case of CMs, a few tehsils were not found in the drop-down menu; iv) A few villages were found on the portals only after several attempts as another village name automatically got selected instead of the requested village; v)

In a few cases, the record identifier column/cell did not appear, vi) Even after all the necessary information was provided, a few RoRs were opening as blank documents showing technical error messages.

2. In Gujarat, in the case of RoRs, sample villages in the Devabhumi Dwarka district (drawn from the DoLR database) were not found in the relevant tehsil.

3. In Tamil Nadu, the drop-down menu for the patta number was not available, and hence the only method to obtain it was through trial and error by typing random patta numbers

Moreover, the range of patta numbers varied a lot within tehsils.

4. In Assam, 21 villages in Majuli tehsil in Majuli district were not found in the respective tehsil but were identified in Jorhat tehsil. Hence, all 12 sample villages were replaced in the Majuli tehsil and a new sample was drawn. Another issue reported was that Bijni tehsil was found in Chirang district instead of in Bongaigaon district, as provided in the DoLR database.

Moreover, there was no range available for the dag number on the portal.

5. In many cases, the listing of revenue villages did not have a unique corresponding record in the portals of the States/UTs. Cases of Group Gram Panchayats in which more than one revenue village formed a part of the panchayat, were commonly observed in Bihar and Jharkhand. This made the search for land records infructuous.

6. Due to administrative changes, district names had changed in some cases. At some places, the district name that had changed was not necessarily accompanied with the change in the sadar/tehsil of the same name. For example in Punjab, the change in the name of Ropar to

Roopnagar was not done on the State portal. A number of administrative changes had either re-organised the tehsils in full or in part from one district to the new one. For example, in

Uttar Pradesh, Amethi tehsil had been reorganised into Sultanpur.

7. In Himachal Pradesh, it was reported that the sample villages in Bhadrota tehsil, as taken from the DoLR website, were found in

Balichowki tehsil on the State portal. In addition, the Neermand tehsil was not accessible despite multiple attempts to locate it.

8. Uttarakhand reported multiple issues of tehsils not being found on the State portal but the sample villages in those tehsils were found in another tehsil. Following are some examples of such cases: villages of Pulla Gumdesh found in

Loha Ghat, village of Munch tehsil in Champawat tehsil, villages of Dewal tehsil in Therari tehsil,

Jalali tehsil in Dwarhat, Shama tehsil in Kapkot, villages of Narsan tehsil found in Roorkee tehsil, and so on.

9. In Jharkhand, Barhait tehsil in Sahibganj district was not found on the State portal.

10. In Madhya Pradesh, Newari district, which had been recently formed in 2018 from Tikamgarh district, was not found on the State portal.

11. In Tamil Nadu, Chennai district was still being considered as rural on the DoLR website but the sample for the same could not be drawn since Chennai has now been considered as urban. the user to enter CAPTCHA codes. As regards payment for accessing the RoRs, except for Kerala, in all the other cases, information was available free of cost. When all the above requirements were fulfilled, the RoRs were downloadable in PDF formats in 26 States/UTs, whereas in two States/UTs, the RoRs appeared onscreen in read-only format, while in Kerala they could not be accessed at all.

Accessing CMs: When the portals of the States/UTs were visited, the type of details required or the procedure to access the CMs was found to be simple in 13 States/ UTs, but in eight States/UTs, additional information was required to gain access, such as the Revenue unit number, and map type, apart from the basic administrative details and identifier number (see Figure 8.6). After the above details were entered, the CMs easily appeared on the web screen in 13 States/UTs and in almost 13 States/UTs, PDF versions of the CMs were downloadable. In a majority of the States/UTs, CAPTCHA codes were not required, and except for Kerala, maps were available free of cost in case of all States/ UTs.

(For details, please refer to Annexure Tables A8.2 and A8.3).

The specific State/UT-wise examples of accessibility issues have been summarised in Box 8.2

8.3. Measurement of Citizens’ Use and Satisfaction with the Interface and Ser vices: Proposed Primar y Sur vey

Although the current N-LRSI, based on information reported by the States/UTs and test-checks is an excellent start, it is a good reflection mainly of the supply-side of land record services. While NCAER will continue to refine this supply-side picture of the N-LRSI in Year 2 and beyond, it is important to incorporate user perceptions of land record services and how they relate to peoples’ perceptions of their property rights in practice. This will more credibly capture both the demand- and the supply-side dimensions of land record-related services in each State/UT, and thereby spur individual States/UTs to improve their respective standings in the N-LRSI rankings. This is vital for obtaining an independent check of how the governments’ initiatives are translating on the ground to citizens’ experiences. The same considerations have prompted recent analytical work, including at NCAER, which seeks to look at the impact of the Government’s reforms on the ease of doing business and their impact on the ground.

In a larger sense, the ‘user perceptions’ part of the LRSI will be used to validate actions taken by the States/UTs on the supply side. The N-LRSI with both supply and demand indicators, if linked to financial (and political) rewards and sanctions, can promote the race to the top, which is needed for achieving efficient and large-scale modernisation of India’s land records. This approach fits in well with India’s emphasis on competitive and cooperative federalism, and could prove to be a significant step towards achieving the goal of effective land record management. The ‘user perceptions’ component of the LRSI is vital for measuring demandside satisfaction and whether changes in official policy, programmes, and practice are creating a perceptible difference on the ground.

8.4. Conclusion

This chapter examined the accessibility