What Is Svamitva Scheme? And How It Is Helping Rural India

India is a subcontinent and a country with a vast area comprising of rural regions. India has many developed cities such as Tier 1 cities but it is still a developing country overall.

India faced many challenges in real estate in rural regions as the real estate sector in India did not have any dedicated system or even an integrated system to handle rural areas in particular.

What Is SVAMITVA Scheme?
On 24 April 2020 (24th of April is observed as the National Panchayat Day in India), Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi launched the SVAMITVA Scheme for integrated survey of properties in rural India using drone (unmanned aircraft) technology. The demarcation of rural abadi areas would be done using Drone Surveying technology to provide the ‘record of rights’ to owners possessing houses in inhabited rural areas in villages.

What Is SVAMITVA Stands For?
SVAMITVA stands for Survey of Villages Abadi and Mapping with Improvised Technology In Village Areas. The survey for this scheme will reportedly be done in a span of four years with the total estimated budget being approximately INR 200 crore (from the initial estimated INR 79.65 crore in 2020).

The latest SVAMITVA scheme will reportedly provide record of rights to village household owners and issue property cards to the relevant owners in rural areas of India. The property cards issued by the scheme will serve as the official document that can be used as collateral for bank loans and many other financial benefits. Villagers can finally use their rural property as a financial asset, thanks to the SVAMITVA scheme introduced to help the owners of rural properties across India! This move will bring rural property owners in India a strong financial stability. Given that property cards will serve as a property validation and clearly show the owner’s details, the scheme will prevent most property-related disputes which are a regular occurrence in rural areas. It will also prevent most other legal disputes in the rural regions.

The physical distribution of property cards by state governments started in October 2020. The pilot phase of SVAMITVA scheme was set for 2020–2021 and approximately 1 lakh villages of the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Karnataka, and a few villages of Punjab and Rajasthan were reported to be covered in the phase. Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) network establishment was planned for the states of Punjab and Rajasthan.

The rural property owners of these villages were enabled to download property cards via an SMS-delivered link on their phone.

The SVAMITVA scheme also known as SVAMITVA Yojana was mainly launched to validate properties in rural India under an integrated system using aerial technology – the drone technology – for survey of the said properties. The scheme is one of Government Of India’s measures to standardise the real estate sector in India. The scheme will also help create accurate land records which will greatly help in rural planning.

SVAMITVA scheme will help integrate all villages of India (approximately 6.62 lakh villages) while the drone technology will provide GIS-based village maps or Gram Manchitra that contribute in improvising the quality of Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP). These maps and related data will be jointly owned by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, the state governments and the Survey of India (SoI); The SoI is also the chosen technology partner for implementation. The eGramSwaraj web portal and eGramSwaraj mobile app can be used to track the activities of SVAMITVA scheme.

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