Nitish Kumar's Land Survey Gamble Ahead Of 2025 Election Is Not Paying Off

Before announcing his party, Prashant Kishor predicted that Nitish Kumar’s politics is nearing its end. According to him, sanctioning the land survey was one of three death knells for the Kumar administration.

The land survey is probably the second biggest exercise of this decade in Bihar, after the infamous caste survey. It began on 20 August but was halted after a month due to recurring complaints of multiple discrepancies and corruption. It will restart after three months.

Here is all you need to know about it:

Scope of the Survey

The scale of the land survey is unprecedented. It aims to digitise more than 25 crore revenue documents, including cadastral, revisional, and consolidation khatiyan (land records), maps, and mutation records.

The exercise will cover all types of land documentation, ensuring comprehensive coverage across Bihar’s 45,000 villages.

Villagers and landowners will undergo a detailed verification process, with land records being cross-checked against digital copies. The state's entire administrative machinery, ranging from language experts to revenue officials, has been mobilised for this colossal task.

This is Bihar's first comprehensive land survey in over a century. The last cadastral survey took place in 1910 during British rule. Since then, changes in land ownership, population growth, and administrative lapses have compounded the problem of land management in the state.

Zamindari abolition and land donation complicated the matter further. To correct records, a mini survey (less on the ground, more on paper) was conducted in 1962. However, middlemen appointed by the government only worsened it.

Rationale Behind the Survey

The most immediate reason for this land reform is the alarming rise in land-related crimes.

Land disputes are rampant in Bihar, with more than 3,000 cases filed every year, and over 1,000 murders annually linked directly to these conflicts.

An astonishing 60 per cent of the state's criminal cases stem from unresolved or contested land ownership. Seventy to 80 per cent of murder cases are traced back to land-related conflicts.

Land disputes contribute to the cycle of corruption in Bihar’s land administration. Fake documentation is rampant, with government lands being sold off illegally.

More worryingly, a study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research points out that around 20 per cent of Bihar’s land remains unsurveyed.

The government is late to realise that many of these lands have been sold by forging documents.

According to Dilip Jaiswal, the Revenue and Land Reforms Department Minister, 52,000 acres of the state government's land are illegally owned by mafias. This broker-bureaucrat nexus is at the crux of land disputes in Bihar, so much so that even the almighty government is not spared.

In many cases, oral transfers of land have been the norm, with property passing from generation to generation without formal documentation. This has created a legal vacuum where ownership claims often lack proof.

But Why Now?

The land survey has been in the pipeline for more than a decade. Political opposition, administrative hurdles, and the sheer magnitude of the task delayed its implementation.

In the last decade or so, Kumar’s image as an able administrator and reformer has taken a hit, arguably due to his regular flip-flops and complaints about his flagship schemes to provide water and cheap electricity.

Another key factor pushing Kumar to act is Kishor, who has expressed his intention to bring land reforms to Bihar.

Kumar became so desperate for land reforms that he even offered to publicly touch the feet of the additional chief secretary of the land revenue department while handing over 10,000 appointment letters to officers designated for the job, called the 'special survey assistant settlement officers'.

Why Was It Halted?

As soon as the survey kicked off, fears around operational issues started to come true.

One major issue lies in the informal nature of land transfers in Bihar. Most land in the state has been passed down through generations via oral agreements, with little to no formal documentation. Families assume ownership of land based on historical use and inheritance rather than legal titles.

As a result, a significant portion of landowners are struggling to prove ownership when their property is surveyed. The government's reliance on village mediators has created new opportunities for the more powerful to settle scores.

Secondly, rampant corruption is persistent. In the past, land-related bribery in Bihar typically involved relatively small sums of money, with people paying anywhere from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 to resolve disputes or update records.

With this statewide survey and stakes being much higher, officers’ demands have risen manifold. In local WhatsApp groups, people are collaborating so that when they go to officers as a group, they are charged less.

Videos of bribery are shared widely, with one being shared by Sudhakar Singh, a Member of Parliament (MP) from Buxar in the Lok Sabha.

Thirdly, a language issue has created problems. Before the 1980s, land-related documents in Bihar were mainly written in the Kaithi script. The problem is that Kaithi is on the verge of extinction, which is why those who can read Kaithi are charging exorbitant fees to do so.

Even those who have taken proper training in Kaithi are unable to read old documents due to the classical and formal nature of the text.

Political Implications

The statewide land survey is a bold and necessary move for Bihar, but it is also a politically risky one.

One theory behind the survey is that it mainly impacts forward castes, which make up only 15.52 per cent of the state’s population (according to the latest caste survey of the Bihar government). For Kumar, it is a risk he is willing to take.

However, the ground reality is that backward classes have also been on a land-buying spree over the last 30 years. These groups benefitted from Lalu Yadav’s rise and made fortunes following his footsteps. The term nav samanti (neo feudals), which is gaining traction in Bihar, is used to represent these people.

Moreover, the Most Backward Castes (MBCs) and Maha Dalits, most of whom remain digitally illiterate, are finding it hard to fight government machinery. Many do not have proper documents like genealogy records.

While they struggle to earn an average daily income of Rs 200, the Sarpanch demands Rs 1,000 for making these documents, or they risk losing their land.

Amid all this, Tejashwi Yadav and his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are constantly targeting the Kumar government on this front. Even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is blaming them for relatively less enthusiasm for its membership drive.

The government has now gone soft on the deadline (July 2025) and is giving people ample time to submit correct documents.