DDA starts work on digitising layout plans

The move, DDA officials said, will help people in accessing land-related information without approaching any government official. For instance, while getting the building plans sanctioned from civic agencies, people have to attach a copy of the area or residential colony’s layout plan.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has started the process to digitise layout plans of urbanised areas–residential colonies and commercial areas—in a bid to create an online inventory of land records and make them easily available to citizens. The land-owning agency aims to digitise over 2,000 layout plans available with it, all the civic agencies and the Central government in the national Capital.

A view of the market inside Delhi Development Authority (DDA) Flats at Narela in New Delhi. The land-owning agency aims to digitise over 2,000 layout plans available with it. (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

The move, DDA officials said, will help people in accessing land-related information without approaching any government official. For instance, while getting the building plans sanctioned from civic agencies, people have to attach a copy of the area or residential colony’s layout plan. “At present, people have to approach the DDA or the three civic agencies to get the layout plan. Once digitization is done, citizens can directly download the layout from the web portal,” said a senior DDA official aware of the development.

Once all the layouts are digitised, DDA official said, it will help keep a check on encroachments and plan for improving civic and social infrastructure. The DDA had recently hired a consultant for the digitization project.

Explaining the process, a senior DDA official said that the layouts will be scanned, each plot will be marked after ground-truthing (which involves marking the coordinates of the plot), superimposing it on zonal plans and land-use plans and uploading it on Geographic Information System (GIS) platform.

Kapoor said the decision to digitise the layout plans was taken as some of the layouts are very old and not in good condition. A few years back, the DDA had scanned and uploaded the layout plans on its website. “We will be asking all the civic agencies, Centre’s Land and Development Office for layout plans,” Kapoor said.

“But these (plans) are of not much use to people, as these are just scanned copies. Once layouts are digitised, we will have geo-coordinates of all the plots, roads and other social infrastructure in each area. Like Google Maps, people will be able to see the layout plans of their area,” Kapoor said.

Sabyasachi Das, former planning commissioner and in-charge of UTTIPEC, said, “It is a good move, but superimposing the layout plans on the zonal plans will be a challenge as the scale on which the two maps are prepared are completely different…If it is done, people will benefit from it as they will not have to come to DDA or any civic agency to seek a copy of the area’s layout plan while getting their building plans sanctioned.”

DDA officials said the process will help the land-owning agency in meeting the needs of various administrative operations. “It will help in planning and managing infrastructure, allotment and regulation of properties, establishing new areas at various locations and facilitate investors to get glimpse of the near real-time property/plot availability and status,” said an official explaining the scope of the work.