New Delhi: With drones getting cheaper and becoming more popular as well as an affordable tool among civilians and commercial enterprises, the Maharashtra government is all set to soon take the services of drones for updating its land records. The state also aims at undertaking a massive land survey exercise in a bid to provide ownership to around over 15 million rural households in the state.
This exercise that was last held during the British regime.
Now, drones are gradually going mainstream in India from the remote corners of the science labs — from delivering food to monitoring livestock, tracking wild fires, water management, land surveys etc.
A senior official in the Maharashtra government confirmed the development to this newspaper on the condition of anonymity, saying that the state is shortly going to use the drone tool for updating its land records in the state.
“Recently, for not only land records but also water management purposes, we have roped in Terra Drone India, an associate company of Japan-based Terra Drone Corporation, as its technology partner. Being one of the largest providers of industrial drone solutions in the world, the aim of this exercise is to undertake a massive land survey exercise for providing ownership to around over 15 million rural households in the state,” the official said.
“Terra Drone India almost completed an aerial survey of 4,200 sq km of agricultural land for the water resou-rces department of the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC),” he added.
Apart from land survey, MKVDC wanted to update its decades-old agricultural maps to make water management more efficient in the state. “The organisation also wanted to make sure no crop was being sown by farmers in areas shown as non-irrigated land to avoid usage charges,” he said.
A total of 1,085 villages and farm boundaries were identified for surveying using UAVs or drones.
The official added that Terra Drone India surveyed an average of 120 sq km of area per day, acquiring images with 2cm/pixel resolution.
