In MP village, Adivasi farmers’ land goes missing from digital records

For Akla Chamar, owning even a small land parcel meant security.

For two decades, the 80-year-old farmer held on to government documents that identify him to be the “bhu-swami”, or land owner of 2.23 hectares in Dagadkhedi village in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district.

One of them is a 4x6 inch land rights and loan booklet that the state revenue department issued in 2001 under a scheme for Adivasi farmers with small landholdings. The other is a notarised land registry document in his name from the same year.

The booklet has the signature of the tehsildar of Bhagwanpura under which Dagadkhedi falls, and carries entries of cooperative bank loans taken by Akla against his land over the years.

Yet, when Akla searches for his details on the land records portal, MP Bhulekh, he draws a blank. The portal allows users to search land records by district, tehsil, village, plot number or the landholder’s name. But the plot, or khasra number, listed in Akla’s documents does not exist on the portal.

Like Akla, around 40 Barela and Bhil Adivasi farmer families in Dagadkhedi village close to the Maharashtra border, face a similar predicament. They possess land rights and loan booklets acknowledging their ownership of land they have cultivated.

But on...

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