QR codes on land records to make manual signatures redundant

Land Ministry says documents containing QR codes will be “legally binding and universally acceptable”

The Bangladesh government has started attaching barcodes with mutation ledgers and other land-related dockets that effectively made the necessity of having a signature from an assistant land commissioner or a land officer redundant.

Bangladesh has been effectively working for a decade to make the centuries-old complex land registration process user-friendly for its citizens by introducing an e-mutation process under the government’s flagship a2i project.

From now, documents involving mutation ledgers that highlight the location and the area of a piece of land and duplicate carbon receipt, or DCR, will contain a quick response code, which will be “legally binding and universally acceptable”.

Any individual can check the legality of such land ownership-related documents by simply scanning the QR codes with scanners on their smartphones. A scan will take them to the respective records kept in the archives of either www.land.gov.bd or mutation.land.gov.bd.

Earlier in 2021, the government introduced QR code-based online DCR, which is equivalent to the DCR issued using a manual method or printed from the BG Press and equally binding.