India pushes major digital land reforms with national symposium on NAKSHA and landstack

The Government of India is set to unveil a significant stride in digital land reforms as the Department of Land Resources (DoLR), under the Ministry of Rural Development, hosts the National Symposium on NAKSHA and LandStack on December 3, 2025, at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. Organised as part of the GeoSmart India 2025 Conference & Expo, the symposium aims to accelerate technology-driven transformation of urban land governance across the country.

Positioned as a landmark initiative within India’s broader digital governance push, the symposium will bring together key policymakers, senior officials from the Survey of India, State Revenue and Land Records Departments, geospatial experts, and industry leaders. The day-long event is structured around six intensive technical sessions that will collectively spotlight the future of urban land administration.

One of the core agenda points is a detailed review of the NAKSHA - National Geospatial Knowledge-based Land Survey of Urban Habitations pilot programme. The initiative uses advanced aerial mapping, feature extraction and geospatial technologies to generate highly accurate land records.

The symposium will evaluate the progress of NAKSHA across 157 cities, addressing operational challenges such as precision mapping in dense urban landscapes, integration with existing cadastral records, and ensuring the reliability of aerial survey outputs. The discussions aim to chart a roadmap for scaling the pilot nationwide.

A major highlight will be deliberations on the development of LandStack, envisioned as India’s comprehensive, federated digital platform for urban land governance. Experts will explore the architecture required to unify cadastral maps, geospatial layers and administrative records under interoperable national standards.

The focus will be on creating core digital base layers, enabling seamless data exchange between States and Union Territories, and establishing a resilient ecosystem to support real-time governance applications.

The symposium will also examine the rollout of the proposed UrPro Card, a secure, fully digital property document aimed at simplifying land ownership verification and transactions.

Key discussions will centre on the legal and institutional reforms needed across States and UTs to integrate the UrPro Card with property registration, mutation, taxation, building permissions and other land-related workflows. The initiative seeks to empower citizens with transparent, portable and authenticated property rights.

Participants will witness an end-to-end demonstration of the latest WebGIS Platform and Cloud Services developed for urban land administration. The sessions will highlight how AI/ML-based analytics, 3D city mapping, and cloud-geospatial services can enhance accuracy, detect anomalies, and promote transparency in land management.

These technologies are expected to significantly improve service delivery, reduce disputes, and make urban governance more citizen-friendly.

The National Symposium underscores the Government’s commitment to a Whole-of-Government approach in replacing outdated, fragmented land systems with modern, data-driven frameworks. By integrating advanced geospatial tools and unified digital workflows, the initiative supports India’s larger vision of Viksit Bharat, strengthening urban administration and enhancing ease of living.

The event is poised to serve as a critical platform for shaping India’s next-generation digital land reforms, setting the stage for a transformative shift in how cities manage land records and deliver citizen services.