Our country has primarily an agrarian economy and land is deemed to be of agricultural nature unless there is a Land Conversion Sanad issued for that parcel of land. The Land Conversion Sanad is issued by the Revenue Department through Collectors and Deputy Collectors, which forms good revenue for the Government. In Goa, the service is delivered as per Section 32 of Goa Land Revenue Code 1968. It is important to have a record of all such transactions besides facilitating timely delivery. Once these essential records are in place, working out a mechanism for enabling checks to prevent conversions which violate the basic Regional Plan Policy would be possible.
DC*Suite is a Land Conversion Application developed by NIC Goa for the South Goa Collectorate and related Offices to manage land conversion activities under their jurisdiction.
SALIENT FEATURES With the implementation of DC*Suite, the physical movement of documents between stakeholders has been eliminated. This has reduced the time lags and increased the efficiency at individual, organizational and inter-organizational levels. Following are the highlight features of the system: • The letters and inspection reports are now digitally signed documents for authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation. This has been made available in the system to the concerned authorities. • The noting sheet is maintained by the system, with a facility for the reviewing and approving authorities to digitally sign. Once the workflow gets completed, the approving authority would be able to digitally sign the noting sheet, which can also be printed for record purpose and track the proceedings. • This system has a configurable workflow, which makes the application work dynamically and concurrently with the changes in organizational structure and work allocation/ workflow, which may occur in future. • The system facilitates seamless integrity between the various stakeholder departments those who are involved in the process for Town and Country Planning, Mamlatdars, Forest Department and Inspector of Settlement, Land Records etc. • Conversion Sanad is a digitally signed document • The system uses Dharani (Goa Textual Land Records System Rural and Urban) web-services for pulling live ROR as PDF and its details for validating the property details to be inspected. • Online Land Conversion Cases System has been integrated with the eChallan Payment Gateway web-services of Goa State Treasury for generating eChallan and easy payment offline or online. • Citizens can pay the Survey Fee and Sanad Fee online using Goa State Treasury’s eChallan Payment Gateway portal. • The system enables tracking of eChallan payment status. • Generate eChallan receipts. • SMS gateway is integrated, which enables the applicant to keep track of the application status at all major levels of case processing.
BENEFITS FOR CITIZENS • Citizens will be notified at various stages of progress of the case through SMS • Payment of Survey Fee and Conversion fee through eChallan Payment Gateway offline and online • Enables Tracking eChallan Payment Status • Since no manual letter based communication is involved, time taken during the manual correspondence with stakeholders has been cut down. • The system binds all stakeholders involved in Land Conversion
TECHNOLOGY STACK • Open Source Technologies such as LAMP with HTML5, CSS 3, Ajax, JQuery and JavaScript • PDF and XADES Digital Signatures for document authentication, integrity and non-repudiation • Dot Net Framework based web services with Crystal Reports for generation of letters as PDF and eChallan generation • Payment status check using the Goa State Treasury’s eChallan Payment Gateway
SUMMARY It is also necessary to reflect the Land Conversions on the Land Classification section of Record of Rights (ROR) by updation of the same. Earlier, the practice of reflecting the changes on the ROR after a land conversion was not prevalent. Thus the Land Classification section of ROR does not reflect the actual land use prevailing on the field. Necessary measures in this regard are being taken by Revenue Department, Government of Goa.
A process to trigger auto-updation of ROR with the necessary required checks which is secure, convenient for existing applications is being worked upon.
DC*Suite is planned for replication at all other sub-divisions of South Goa District.