The HimBhoomi initiative of NIC Himachal Pradesh has been awarded the Manthan 2013 Special Mention Award under the eGovernance category in the recently held Manthan Awards 2013 (Asia Pacific South Asia) event at New Delhi. Earlier, the HimBhoomi application was selected as a Finalist. All the Finalists made presentations during the two-day Manthan Awards event in New Delhi. Dr. Saurabh Gupta, State Informatics Officers, NIC Himachal Pradesh made the presentation at New Delhi and based on it, the Manthan Award 2013 (Special Mention) was given to the HimBhoomi initiative. The details of Manthan 2013 Awards are available on the website at http://manthanaward.org

The HimBhoomi initiative is an integrated solution for the land records, covering registration, land records, maps, lease cases, delivery of Jamabandi at Panchayat level through Citizen Service Centres (LokMitra).  It has been a massive exercise over the last 20 years. Started as true replica of existing Record of Rights (RoR), it got integrated with the Registration process and thereafter, a number of Process Changes (reforms) have been affected in the recent years to simplify and provide value additions to the RoR entries like; removing internal fractions (dar-var) while specifying shares owned by co-sharers, in case of Shajra Nasb removing the constraint of maintaining record up to last 10 generations maximum, authorizing CSC operators to sign and issue RoRs etc.

More than 1 lakh RoR copies have been taken by citizens through LokMitra Kendras in just two months, in a State with 12 lakh households and a total State population of 68 lakhs. It clearly shows the coverage and popularity of the initiative among the citizens, from digital inclusion point of view as 88 percentage of population and LokMitra Kendras are in rural areas.