Land records via SMS in Telugu

Land records via SMS in Telugu

Hyderabad, Feb 20: The city-based National Informatics Centre is developing an application to provide land records via SMS in Telugu in areas outside the State capital. At present, interested persons in Hyderabad district can get SMS responses on land data by sending SMS queries to the designated number 94408 15861.
Revenue minister Dharmana Prasada Rao informed D. Sridhar Babu and others in the Assembly on Monday that about 1,900 people had used the SMS service from December 31, 2005, when it was launched. “It is yet to catch up. We are trying to promote the technology,” Mr Rao said. “It takes a couple of minutes to pass on the information. Since the land records in Hyderabad are in English, there is no problem.” Mr Rao said.
He added, “The data will be useful for those wanting to know details about the property in view of the largescale cheating.” In the rest of the State, however, the land records (Pahani/Adangal) are in Telugu. To overcome the problem, the National Informatics Centre is developing the application in Telugu so that people in the rest of the State can get land data on SMS. In the existing service, the applicant can ask for land details by sending the block number, ward number and town survey number to 94408 15861. The response mentions who is enjoying the property, the area in square-metres the locality where the property exists.
The application has been developed through purchase of a global system for mobile communications modem. Mr Rao said the size of the message was limited to 160 characters. In case the data is more than 160 characters, two SMSs would be received.