QR codes on land records to make manual signatures redundant

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.