Bangladesh News

The computerised land management system (CLMS), a project undertaken to reduce land disputes and to increase revenues, lies idle due to lack of initiatives from the land ministry.

Funds allocated for the second phase of the project have already been used up while the work has not even started in many areas.

Under the CLMS, information on every land, its sales, transfers, current and former ownerships, categories of use, etc are supposed to be compiled and stored in a readily accessible database structured in line with the revised land settlement record of 1969 to 1983.

Once in operation, the system is supposed to effect a drastic reduction in the number of land disputes, as fake documents would be too hard to come by and would be of no use then.

Following completion of the first phase in Demra circle, the land ministry removed the very officials who had been instrumental in making the pilot project successful. It then allocated funds for the next phase to be implemented in Kotwali, Dhanmondi, Mirpur and Tejgaon circles in the capital.

Twenty percent of the project work in Mirpur and 50 percent in Kotowali have been done but nothing has been done in Dhanmondi and Tejgaon circles, whereas the money allocated has already been gobbled up, said sources involved with the project.

“I have just taken up the charge, so I can’t say exactly what happened during that time,” the assistant commissioner (AC-Land) of Demra and Tejgaon circles told The Daily Star.

The land ministry sources said the government allocated Tk 97 lakh for the project in Demra in November 2004. The Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) was awarded the job to develop a software system to keep land records, which they did successfully.

The government then allocated about Tk 2.27 crore for setting up similar systems in four more zones — Dhaka Kotwali, Tejgaon, Mirpur and Dhanmondi.

But as the work began, influential vested interest groups allegedly led by the then former deputy land minister had Engineer Tahbub Alam, the then assistant commissioner of Demra circle, transferred to the local government ministry, although he had been overseeing the pilot project quite efficiently as its coordinator before the transfer, the ministry sources added.

Besides, the ministry granted the work order for the second phase to Development Planners and Consultants (DPC) instead of CEGIS.

Since then, the new software developer and the government officials could not make much headway into the project although the fund had been spent, the sources said.

Mahmudur Rahman, managing director of DPC, claimed that they completed their job in accordance with the contract with the land ministry.

“We’ve done our part and the rest is not our concern,” he said.

Despite completion of the project in Demra circle, the land ministry did not issue any order allowing the land courts and others concerned access to the information stored in CLMS. Had the tribunals been provided computerised records, there would have been reduced land disputes in Demra zone by now.

Although the number of land cases keeps rising due to availability of fake documents, the land ministry remains indifferent to the urgency of resuming the project.

At present around 32 lakh cases are pending in the courts. And even more astounding is the fact that 15 crore names are listed as accused in those cases when the country’s entire population according to the last census is less than that, said sources in the land ministry.

Most of the cases were filed on the basis of forged documents, they added.