Chandigarh (Naval Kishore): The Chandigarh Administration has stepped up efforts to modernise land administration, with Chief Secretary H. Rajesh Prasad reviewing the progress of the ambitious Landstack Project and the NAKSHA Pilot Programme during a high-level meeting held on Monday.
The review meeting brought together senior officials, including Home Secretary Mandip Singh Brar, Finance Secretary Diprava Lakra, Municipal Commissioner Amit Kumar, Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav, representatives of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), and officers from various departments associated with the projects.
During the meeting, officials presented updates on the digitisation of land records, GIS-based mapping of land parcels, verification of ownership details, integration of departmental databases, and the development of citizen services through the proposed Landstack Portal.
The Chief Secretary described the Landstack initiative as a major reform aimed at making land management more transparent, efficient and accountable. Once operational, the portal is expected to provide residents with a single digital platform to access land-related records and property information, reducing paperwork and minimising visits to government offices.
Recognising the complexity of merging records maintained by different departments, Prasad directed officials to prioritise accuracy while integrating ownership documents, maps and other property data. He stressed the need for close coordination among departments, the Deputy Commissioner’s Office and NIC to ensure that information uploaded to the portal is reliable and verified.
He also instructed departments to strictly follow standardised formats and technical guidelines to ensure seamless interoperability between databases. In addition, the Chief Secretary recommended linking utility-related property services with the Landstack platform, saying such integration could place Chandigarh among the country’s leading jurisdictions in digital land governance.
The meeting also reviewed the implementation of the NAKSHA Pilot Programme, which focuses on preparing authenticated urban property records. Expressing satisfaction with the progress achieved so far, Prasad directed officials to immediately begin the claims and objections stage in the selected villages, paving the way for issuing Urban Property Cards to residents of Abadi Deh areas included in the pilot project.
He further suggested that, after the successful completion of the pilot phase, the initiative should gradually be expanded across the entire Union Territory to establish a comprehensive urban land record system. The Chief Secretary also underlined the importance of adopting secure digital technologies to safeguard the authenticity and long-term security of property records.
Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav informed the meeting that significant headway had already been made under both projects and assured that all departments were working in coordination to complete the remaining tasks within the prescribed timelines.
The meeting concluded with directions to all stakeholder departments to continue implementing both initiatives on a mission mode, with a focus on timely execution and the creation of a transparent, technology-driven and citizen-friendly land administration system for Chandigarh.
