The record of his agricultural land means a lot to a farmer, especially the owner of a small or medium-sized farm. It involves multiple stages within the provincial Board of Revenue (BoR) department before a grower is able to lay their hands on their land’s record. Since most landholdings are owned by small and medium-sized farmers, speedy access to their land records remains cumbersome for many in Sindh.
Though Sindh’s revenue records were scanned over the past decade, procedures for mortgaging farmland, accessing passbooks, issuing sales certificates for land, and obtaining farm credit remained unchanged. This procedure still primarily revolves around the Tapedar (land record keeper) and the Mukhtiarkar (officer handling land disputes and mutation). For many growers, access to agricultural credit from banks was affected by this process, which needs simplification.
Although People’s Service Centres (PSCs) were established in Sindh soon after the formation of the PPP government in 2008, the services mentioned above were not handled at these centres. They, instead, dealt with the provision of a computerised copy of form-VII, a principal document for agricultural land, form-II for urban land, and mutation of urban property records through sub-registrars.
After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, revenue records were lost in arson attacks that occurred in many districts at the time. This necessitated the scanning and storage of all records, as well as the entry of new records, in the Board of Revenue (BoR) data bank under the Provincial Record Cell (PRC). This automation project was termed the Land Administration and Revenue Management Information System (LARMIS).
A farmer is considered lucky if he is able to meet all formalities in one go; otherwise, multiple institutional visits, loss of time, and financial costs to attain land documents are his fate
The Sindh High Court had also intervened in the matter, considering the importance of land revenue records to ensure elimination of tampering, interpolation and forgery in official paperwork; an otherwise common phenomenon. This set the tone for the automation process.
Later, BoR linked PRC to LARMIS while introducing e-stamps to eliminate the use of fake stamps — an infamous practice. This would result in a financial loss to the government’s kitty. Past and present revenue officials claim that the introduction of e-stamps has helped control the use of fake stamps and tampering, and has also contributed to revenue generation.
Sub-registrars sit in PSCs to handle mutations in the registries of urban property and to issue computer-generated copies of forms. According to District Manager PSC of Hyderabad, Ghulam Ali, land deeds/registries have been linked with Nadra and the Federal Board of Revenue for biometric verification and property valuation, respectively. “Human intervention has been reduced through this procedure. Pictures of sellers and buyers, as well as the inspector of the sub-registrar’s office, are taken to make sure who is dealing with every single property,” he informed.
However, by and large, PSCs have not served the farming community. According to farmers, PSCs don’t deliver services under one roof. Transfer, sale, and purchase of farmlands, as well as mortgaging and loan assistance procedures, are still manually processed.
Farmers must still visit post offices to get passbooks. They must approach the Tapedar, Mukhtiarkar, and assistant commissioner at the taluka level before they can obtain the necessary BoR land documents. A farmer is considered lucky if he can meet all formalities in one go; otherwise, multiple visits, wasted time, and financial costs are his fate. Farmers have to chase revenue officials across different offices to get petty issues related to their property resolved if they intend to buy/sell land, or mortgage property to obtain farm credit.
“Sindh as a province doesn’t have a proportional share in the disbursement of farm credit. Difficulties in getting BoR land documents when they are needed the most are the primary reason why we fail to get a loan,” said Mahmood Nawaz Shah, President of Sindh Abadgar Board. He explained this affects the cash flow, and farmers remain unable to use inputs as required for any major cash crop,” he contended.
“Things are much better in Punjab. There, farmers can easily access farm credit because the entire bank documentation process can be completed under one roof, and the bank handles their documentation directly to extend loans quickly. But in Sindh, we face the decades-old cumbersome processes,” he said.
Punjab established its Punjab Land Records Authority (PLRA) in 2017; this is not the case in Sindh. The Director General-led PLRA is a body that operates within the Punjab BoR. “No manual dealings of records are done by BoR staff any longer. Services centres are established at the tehsil level here, where computerised land record management for farmers is done,” said the deputy director of one such service centre in a Punjab district.
According to Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, President of the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, the entire record has not only been computerised, but it also provided at the tehsil level. “We face a problem of a different nature — the menace of illegal gratification,” he said.
The Sindh government initially partnered with the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) to automate and computerise revenue records. It has established its own body, Sindh Information Technology Company (SITC), headed by Zainul Abiden Shah as of late.
A Sindh BoR official involved in the automation process noted that a pilot project approved by the Sindh cabinet is underway in two districts. The project, in collaboration with the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Sukkur, is being executed in three dehs — two in Matiari and one in the Sukkur district. Officials hope it will be completed in the next couple of months, and then replicated in other parts of the province to simplify overall land management.
“The pilot project will enable BoR to see what kind of issues are emerging during the trial, which will be accordingly fixed to make the system safe and sound. We plan to redesign the dynamics of revenue record automation and issue passwords to each farmer for land records to access them,” he said.
Sindh has around 6,090 dehs of 138 talukas in 30 districts. The problem of non-existent infrastructure at the taluka level was a major impediment for the government. Learnings in this pilot project would help the government tackle the problems efficiently.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, February 9th, 2026
