Settle land rights issues before securing them

The blockchain technology was first developed for peer-to-peer currency transactions. Innovators are now seeking to use the technology to update and secure the land records in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Known as disruptive technology that no one can control and hegemonise, blockchain is a decentralised distributed digital ledger collectively maintained by a new work of computers, called nodes. This will not allow one person to modify without those who maintain the records agreeing to the change.

Whether this technology will be helpful to update and secure land records unlike other business activities is a critical question. Because the legal question on the land title of non-tribals in the Scheduled Areas of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh is still unresolved.

There is no conclusive land title system in the Scheduled Areas in favor of non-tribals who constitute more than 50 per cent population, as it is legally presumed that the lands situated in the Scheduled Areas once belonged to Adivasis.

The present available sources of land records are not reliable. While Blockchain can provide huge security to data from being hacked or manipulated, the main area of concern is the data that is entered itself.

Given the status of land records – unrecorded rights on lands shown under various categories of government lands, wrong entries, incomplete entries, false/fake records etc –this system would legitimise them as it does the genuine ones.

Availing of new technology to create permanent land ledgers on the basis of such incorrect input data will pose a serious threat to the tribal land rights. Once, the data is entered by using the Blockchain Technology, it would be difficult to alter the land records.

The question is whether the technology will be helpful to the tribals to secure land rights or legitimise the illegal occupations of non-tribals on the strength of fraudulently secured land titles in their favour earlier. So, the use of Blockchain should not be just digitising existing records but should go through a foolproof authentication through a public open transparent inquiry system.

This technology is successfully used in the transactions of Bitcoin (a cryptocurrency) and since then is being developed rapidly in the banking sector. It is only recently the idea of using this technology in land records has come up.

It is in various stages of adoption in countries such as Georgia, Sweden, UK, Brazil, Japan, Russia and Ukraine. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has partnered with Swedish start-up ChromaWay to build a Blockchain-based solution.

The AP Scheduled Area Land Transfer Regulations 1 of 59 as amended by 1 of 70 were brought to prevent alienation of tribal lands and also to ensure restoration of alienated lands to tribals in the Scheduled Areas (SAs) of the State.

Until and unless the contrary is proved, the land in occupation by non-tribals shall be deemed to have come through a transfer from tribals as per the proviso of Section 3(1)(a) of Land Transfer Regulations (LTRs) (Amended) 1 of 1970.

Pattadar passbooks and title deeds were already issued in favour of non-tribals and mutations were also effected in their favour on the tribal disputed lands. The Koneru Land Committee constituted by the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 2004 found that several orders were issued in favour of non-tribals in violation of the provisions of LTR, abrogating the tribal land rights, and it recommended for scrutiny of the orders for filing of appeals against such orders.

The Land Committee further held that the settlement pattas granted by the settlement officials in favour of non-tribals are not in accordance with the provisions of tribal protective Land Transfers Regulations. All settlement cases where orders were passed in favour of non-tribals should be reopened and re-examined and appeals should be preferred against the survey and settlement orders issued in favour of non-tribals, after making thorough scrutiny of all such orders under respective Settlement Regulations.

Executive actions have to be undertaken assailing the orders passed in favor of non-tribals over the lands situated in the Scheduled Areas. However, the land records are in their names presently. On the strength of such land records, if the land records are entered in the computers through uncontrolled central data base system through Blockchain technology, it will benefit the non-tribals who fraudulently obtained orders in their favour over the lands belonged to Adivasis.

The land transactions mostly in the rural and tribal areas are based on informal commitments. The actual possession of lands will never figure in the revenue land records. The fictitious land records often are helping non-tribals get injunction orders in their favour through the court legal system, affecting the land rights of actual tribal land possessors.

The technology may be availed of after cleansing the land records by placing them for approval before Gram Sabhasconstituted under the PESA Act 1996, without giving any autonomy to the executive sections to carry out the task.

By Dr Palla Trinadha Rao