Indian town adopts Avalanche blockchain for tamper-proof land records

The district administration for a town in India has digitized all land records dating back to the 1950s and stored them on the Avalanche blockchain in a move toward transparent, tamper-proof land governance.

On March 6, the Dantewada District Administration of Chhattisgarh, India, announced that it had digitized over 700,000 land records via the Office of Land Records. The digitized records were secured on the Avalanche blockchain in collaboration with Indian blockchain startup LegitDoc by Zupple Labs. 

Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Mayank Chaturvedi, who is the district collector of Dantewada, highlighted the importance of the initiative:

“For decades, our citizens faced significant delays in accessing their land records, with verification sometimes taking weeks. By digitizing these records and securing them on blockchain, we have ensured they are easily accessible and cannot be tampered with.”

As part of the initiative, the government has installed kiosks in every sub-district of the town, where citizens and government officers can access land information. To ensure the privacy of sensitive information, prior authorization is required for the application.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, LegitDoc CEO Neil Martis said, “The application is a permissioned application wherein records can be accessed via Tehsil level (sub-district administration) revenue officers.”

The blockchain-based land records application allows the officer in charge to search for land properties and download and view the digitized records on the blockchain. 

As a result, several types of government records, such as B-1 forms (elevator installation), records of rights, plot registers, ownership records and cadastral maps, can be viewed and verified over the blockchain.

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The officer can also verify the smart contracts linked to the digital documents over the Avalanche Explorer, ensuring tamper-proof record keeping. 

Cointelegraph was given exclusive access to a public blockchain-based explorer, which showed an open overview of onchain data, smart contracts and onchain activity related to the Dantewada application. 

Devika Mittal, Avalanche India growth consultant, told Cointelegraph:

“Avalanche is honored to support the Office of Land Records, Dantewada in this revolutionary step providing trust and transparency at scale to Lakhs of citizens. Blockchain is the way forward for land record digitization, and Chhattisgarh is at the forefront.”

The project was spearheaded by Jayant Nahata, IAS, who previously served as Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) in Dantewada and is currently the CEO of the Dantewada Zila Panchayat. He said:

“This initiative is groundbreaking as it has led to end-to-end digitisation and Blockchain verifiability of all land record since 1950s ensuring security of documents, reduced legal costs and most importantly ease of access to the common citizens of Dantewada.”

In addition to eradicating manual searching of land records, the tribal communities and farmers in the region are able to secure ownership records and reduce disputes. 

LegitDoc has previously helped various Indian state-level blockchain initiatives involving the issuance and verification of caste certificates, diploma certificates and skill certificates, among others.

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