GUJRAT: The land revenue department has initiated archiving and indexing of the registered property deeds in Gujrat district from 1947.

The project envisaging computerisation of the urban and rural properties’ manual record to preserve the official land record and check fraudulent practices harming actual owners, says an official of the local land revenue department.

He says initially the scanning of registered property deeds had been done in Lahore as a pilot project and now the Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR) has decided to expand it to the entire province, beginning the process from Gujrat.

Though the manual record of documents of registered deeds is available in the official record rooms of the district since 1890, the authorities have decided to initiate the archiving and indexing of the deeds from 1947 to June 2023, says a senior official of the department.

Under the project, at least 3.8 million documents will be scanned in three tehsils of Gujrat district within two to three months, Additional Deputy Commissioner Revenue (ADCR) Khizar Hayat Bhatti told Dawn.

He added that at least 2.52m documents were being scanned in Gujrat Tehsil, followed by around 1.1m in Kharian tehsil and around 160,000 in Sara i Alamgir tehsil.

He said that the scanning and digitisation of the property deeds would further secure the rights and properties of the original owners and help check tempering, theft or damage to the record.

The ADCR said the scanning work was underway in the thee tehsils simultaneously and would hopefully be completed in time by the private firm that had been assigned the task by the BoR.

On the other hand, the Punjab government has recently launched E-registration of the property deeds through online portal facility after which the data of property transfer deeds will become totally digital as per the requirements of modern digital era.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2023