Land is a State subject, yet Centrally-funded programmes like DILRMP shape land governance nationwide. Discuss the federalism challenges in implementing such schemes.

Land and land revenue fall under Entry 18 of the State List, but the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) — restructured as a Central Sector Scheme in 2016 with 100% central funding to States/UTs [1] — has become the de facto template for land governance across India. This creates a productive but contested federal space.

The centralising pull of a fully-funded scheme

• Full central financing gives the Department of Land Resources (Ministry of Rural Development) decisive agenda-setting power, even though execution rests entirely with State revenue departments [1][2].
• DILRMP 3.0 now pushes a common architecture — the GIS-based "Land Stack", piloted in Chandigarh and Tamil Nadu, integrating revenue, survey, registration and local-body data on one interoperable platform [3][2].
• ULPIN ("Bhu-Aadhaar"), a 14-digit geo-coordinate-based parcel ID, has been assigned to over 36 crore parcels across 29 States/UTs — a national standard for a State subject [2].

Resulting federalism frictions

• Standardisation vs. diversity: land tenure, survey settlement systems and revenue nomenclature differ sharply across States; harmonising them into one API-based stack risks flattening legitimate local variation — hence the parallel release of a Glossary of Revenue Terms [3].
• Uneven capacity: while Records of Rights digitisation is near-complete, cadastral map digitisation lags at roughly two-thirds nationally, and North-Eastern States and Ladakh remain outliers [4] — uniform timelines penalise weaker administrations.
• Conditionality: money is central, but mutation, survey and dispute resolution remain State functions; States bear recurring costs and legal reform burdens without matching say.
• Data federalism: Aadhaar seeding and centralised land databases raise questions of ownership, privacy and access to citizens' land data.

Cooperative federalism works best here as partnership, not prescription: the Centre supplying finance, standards and technology; States retaining flexibility on tenure law and survey methods, supported by differential timelines and capacity grants. Anchored in consultative bodies and moving toward conclusive titling, DILRMP can then strengthen property rights without eroding the constitutional distribution of powers.