The Ministry of Land has moved to record the real or actual class of a piece of land as its recorded class in the mutation khatian (record of rights) when mutation is carried out. It has ordered the necessary system to be introduced in the e-mutation system.

The ministry's Digitisation, Knowledge Management and Performance (DKMP) wing sent a letter to that effect on Wednesday, 2 September, to the project director of the Land Management Automation Project.

The letter says updating the recorded class of land is one of the major problems of land management. Land class usually changes naturally or because people change it for their own needs, and steps are needed to bring such changes into the record. If the class is not recorded, land cannot be properly valued during registration and other work, and the government loses a large amount of revenue.

The letter adds that because there is currently no regular system for changing the class, the recorded class cannot be kept up to date.

A person must apply for mutation after acquiring ownership of land by transfer or inheritance, the letter notes. Since mutation updates the record, it is possible to update the class at the same time by converting the land's actual class into the recorded class. At present, however, the class in which land is actually used is not written into the mutation khatian during mutation.

The letter states that the e-mutation software currently has no way to update the recorded class during mutation. Regular updating of the recorded class is needed to collect land development tax, set proper land values and increase revenue.

The project director of the Land Management Automation Project has therefore been instructed to introduce a system in e-mutation so that, when an application for mutation is approved, the actual class is entered in the mutation khatian as the recorded class.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.