PM Modi to offer 5 million property cards under SVAMITVA scheme
Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj said rural residential assets worth ₹1.37 lakh crore can be monetised for availing credit through the SVAMITVA scheme.
The Union ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) on Wednesday said that rural residential assets worth ₹1.37 lakh crore can be monetised for availing credit through the implementation of SVAMITVA scheme, a drone-based survey taken to demarcate properties in rural inhabited areas.
The ministry further said that the inhabited areas of villages were previously not mapped in several states leading to lack of access to institutional credit. Since the exercise, however, several property owners have been able to secure bank loans via their property cards which has a legal basis now, it added.
The survey of villages and mapping with improvised technology in village areas (or SVAMITVA) scheme was launched in 2020 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a bid to bring ‘economic progress’ in rural areas. So far, around 317,000 villages, or 92% of the total target of 344,000 villages, have been surveyed, with people having received their property cards in 136,000 villages. On December 27, PM Modi will launch the distribution of five million property cards across India.
“As a Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto said that capitalism does not work in developing countries because land ownership is not clear. Extrapolating this, the SVAMITVA scheme is related to rural inhabited area where people have properties, but since the asset ownership is not clearly defined, people don’t get bank loans leading to lack of economic activity,” Vivek Bharadwaj, secretary, Panchayati Raj ministry, said. “Such properties have been valued at ₹1.37 lakh crore even taking the lowest market rates of concerned area. The actual value could be more.”
Bharadwaj said that apart from financial inclusion, the scheme has helped in dispute resolution, women empowerment by giving individual or joint legal ownership to the properties. The scheme, he added, has also helped several gram panchayats in addressing encroachments, facilitating better planning for community development by identifying open spaces among others.
MoPR officials clarified that the survey did not take place in urban area as well as of the agricultural lands as the property ownership records are available in these two categories. The ministry further said that going by the progress, it aims to complete the entire survey by financial year 2026.
The scheme, however, has come under criticism of the parliamentary standing committee on Panchayati Raj. In its report on ‘demand for grants’, submitted to the Lok Sabha on December 12, the panel raised several red flags in the implementation in tribal societies.
“The committee also observed that in rural areas there are so many complications on the title of the property due to joint or undivided families and common or community land ownership by the tribal society. These issues need due thought by the Government to resolve them in a systematic and within the legal framework,” the panel added.
Bharadwaj said that states like Jharkhand are not willing to implement the scheme while Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and Odisha already have their rural-inhabited land records updated, and hence opted out of the scheme.
