Mission Basundhara exposes gap between Barak and Bramhaputra; Cachar not in portal, only offline mode available

On October 2, chief minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma unveiled ‘Mission Basundhara’ and called it a “Giant Step” towards fulfilling “a key poll promise”. ‘Mission Basundhara’ will include land related services like land mutation, updating of land records and delivery of these services to the people at their homes through a portal.

“Under Mission Basundhara, a slew of services including survey of non-cadastral villages, re-survey of all cadastral villages, digitisation of land records, etc., will be carried out. We aim to deliver these services to the people in a time-bound manner,” tweeted Sarma.

“Our flagship scheme Mission Basundhara launched today aims at purification of land records and conducting survey and re-survey of villages,” chief minister added.

While it is indeed a historical step taken by the state, Cachar District has not been included in the portal. In the land mutation segment, the beneficiaries need to select the district from the drop-down menu. However, Cachar district does not even exist in the list. So, the Poll Promise was not for the people of Cachar?

“Land records of Cachar are not digitised due to settlement operation. That is why Cachar is not visible in the drop down menu,” informs Jessica Rose Lalsim, Settlement Officer, Cachar and Hailakandi.

She explains, Settlement Operation means updating land records. All manual land records need to be digitised for mission Basundhara to be effective. Through Cachar and Hailakandi, both under same Settlement Office, is not available in the drop down menu of the portal, JR Lalsim informed that the project will be available offline.

“Mission Basundhara will be implemented offline and those districts where settlement operations is on. People will submit their applications to Assistant Settlement Officers Cum Circle Officers and their job will be done,” informed Settlement Officer, JR Lalsim.

Senior sources in the Cachar district administration informed that there is a shortage of human resource due to which the data has not been digitised yet.

Basundhara is a mission to ease issues for the people of Assam. It fastens the process of buying, selling, registering land. While Mission Basundhara acts as a bridge between people and process, the unavailability of Cachar from the drop down menu exposes the gap between Barak – Bramhaputra gap. While people in Bramhaputra valley can do the process sitting at home, people of Cachar will have to go to the Circles Officer with an application to avail the same service.