National Cadastral Resurvey of Bhutan

The National Cadastral Resurvey Programme (NCRP) is the multi-decade Bhutanese project to update the country's land records using modern geographic information system (GIS) and aerial photogrammetry survey methods, replacing the legacy thram-based system that had recorded land ownership since the centralisation of land administration under the second Druk Gyalpo. The programme is administered by the National Land Commission Secretariat (NLCS) under the framework of the Land Act of Bhutan 2007. It has been the principal vehicle of land tenure reform in 21st-century Bhutan.^[1][2]

According to NLCS records, the resurvey was completed across all 20 dzongkhags by 2010, with the resulting digital land registration database now operating through the e-Sakor online land transaction system. New thrams — the legal documents of land ownership — have been progressively reissued to landowners, distinguishing between regularised chazhag thrams and lagthrams (fine thrams without excess land). Although the programme is widely cited as a technical success, it has also produced significant disputes over so-called excess land, surveying errors and discrepancies between previous and resurveyed records.^[1][3][4]

This article covers the legacy system, the structure of the resurvey programme, the Land Act of 2007 framework, the excess land controversy, and connected institutions including the Kidu land grants programme.

Legacy thram system and its problems

The pre-resurvey land registration system in Bhutan was based on thrams, manuscript registers held at dzongkhag level recording the holdings of each household. The system had been formalised under King Jigme Wangchuck in the 1930s and modernised under the third and fourth Druk Gyalpos, but it relied on hand-drawn or sketch-based records rather than measured cadastral mapping. By the 1990s the limitations of the system were evident: paper records were vulnerable to loss and damage, parcel boundaries were unevenly defined, and many holdings turned out on measurement to differ in area from the figures registered on the thram.^[2][5]

This last issue — the gap between recorded and actual land area — became known as the "excess land" problem. In many cases households were found, on resurvey, to be cultivating areas larger than those entered on their thrams, sometimes because of decades of incremental encroachment onto state forest land and sometimes because the original thram understated the holding. The legal status of this excess land became a major preoccupation of the resurvey project.^[1][6]

The Land Act of 2007 framework

The Land Act of Bhutan 2007, enacted at the 87th Session of the National Assembly, replaced the older 1979 land legislation. It established the National Land Commission Secretariat as an autonomous agency in August 2007 and concentrated in it responsibilities previously distributed across multiple ministries — land registration from the Royal Court of Justice, thromde land transactions from the Ministry of Works and Human Settlement, resettlement from the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs, and the cadastral resurvey responsibility itself.^[2][7]

The Act provides the statutory basis for the resurvey, including procedures for thram issuance, dispute resolution, regularisation of excess land, and the development of the comprehensive ICT-based land registration system. It sets ceilings on private holdings (25 acres per household for wetland and dryland combined, with separate provisions for tseri and pangzhing — shifting cultivation lands now formally restricted) and provides the legal framework for land kidu and rehabilitation programmes.^[2][7] No subsequent overhaul of cadastral legislation has been enacted as of early 2026; bills described as cadastral or land reform legislation appearing in news reports have not been confirmed as enacted laws.

Resurvey methodology and rollout

The NCRP combined aerial photogrammetry, satellite imagery and ground-based GPS survey work to produce digital cadastral maps for each gewog. Field teams worked with local landholders to verify boundaries, measure parcel areas and resolve disputed lines. The resulting data were entered into a central digital cadastre maintained by NLCS in Thimphu and made accessible through the e-Sakor portal launched in 2008.^[1][3]

The rollout proceeded gewog by gewog. In 2017 ten gewogs in Paro were issued new lagthrams; Wangdue had received new thrams in 15 gewogs by 2013. By 2019 the NLCS, in coordination with respective gewogs, had resurveyed and resolved most outstanding excess land cases nationally, with regularised excess land being granted as land kidu in the same year, and the relevant lagthrams and chazhag thrams issued the following year.^[1][4]

Excess land controversy

The treatment of excess land was the most contentious element of the resurvey. Two broad approaches were applied: regularisation of small excess (typically a fraction of an acre) at the discretion of the NLCS, and cancellation or reversion to state ownership of larger excess parcels found to derive from illegitimate encroachment. The Royal Government of Bhutan presented this as a necessary correction of historical irregularities; some affected households described the resulting reductions in their holdings as confiscatory.^[6][8]

The political handling of the issue was eased by the Kidu Land Allotment Programme, under which the king granted land kidu to landless and near-landless households. Between the start of the programme in 2010 and 2024, the kidu programme had reportedly granted land to over 100,000 beneficiaries across 13 dzongkhags, including 25,815 beneficiaries in a single year in Zhemgang, Pema Gatshel and Samdrup Jongkhar. The combination of regularisation of small excess holdings and royal grants of new land mitigated the immediate hardship caused by resurvey-driven adjustments, but the underlying disputes over individual parcels have continued to surface in court records and in National Council deliberations.^[6][9]

Connected institutions

The NCRP and the wider land administration system rest on a network of bodies. The NLCS, headquartered in Thimphu, runs the technical and administrative side of the resurvey. The Land Commission itself, chaired by the prime minister, sets policy and approves regularisation cases above defined thresholds. The Royal Government's National Rehabilitation Programme, instituted in 2011 under the NLCS, manages the resettlement of landless and socio-economically disadvantaged communities, including those displaced by infrastructure projects or affected by adverse cadastral findings.^[1][6][9]

The system also has a public-facing dimension through e-Sakor, which permits online processing of land transactions including inheritance, sale, gift, exchange and donation, and through the dzongkhag-level land record offices that interface with citizens on day-to-day matters. The combination of digital cadastre, statutory framework and royal kidu has produced a hybrid system in which administrative rationalisation and royal patronage operate side by side.

References

1. National Land Commission Secretariat — official site
2. Land Act of Bhutan 2007 — ECOLEX legislation database
3. e-Sakor online land transaction system — NLCS
4. Land Record — Paro Dzongkhag Administration
5. Karma Phuntsho, The History of Bhutan (Random House India, 2013), chapters on land and revenue under the second and third kings
6. Land Kidu reforms: Giving a stake — The Bhutanese
7. Comprehensive Review of the Land Act of Bhutan, 2007 for Revision — Heidelberg University repository
8. Record land kidu granted — Kuensel
9. Kidu: Bhutan's benevolent fund — Daily Bhutan