Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have been ranked as top performers in digitalisation of land records by Delhi-based think-tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). The second edition of NCAER Land Record and Services Index (N-LRSI) 2021, released on Friday revealed that almost all States and Union Territories (UTs) have shown an improvement in their efforts to digitise land records compared to the previous year.

Madhya Pradesh ranked first for the second time in a row. West Bengal has moved up by four ranks, from rank six to two. Odisha and Maharashtra, which ranked second and third in N-LRSI 2020, have fallen by one rank each to take up rank three and four in this year's index. The project is supported by Omidyar Network India through its Property Rights Research Consortium initiative which aims to enable evidence-based solutions for securing land, housing and property rights in India.

According to an NCAER statement, the NLRSI 2021 is based on data collected over 2020-21 on two aspects of the supply of land records - the extent of digitisation of land records and the quality of these land records.

N-LRSI was first launched in February 2020 to gauge the performance of all states and UTs on the extent of their digitisation process for land records and services and the overall improvement in the quality of the record as a result of the digitisation process.