The Supreme Court on Thursday underlined the need for digitising land records using blockchain technology to minimise forgery in property transactions and urged the Centre and state governments to take up this much-needed reform.
A bench of justices Rajesh Bindal and Manmohan said, “This court deems it necessary to suggest to the Union and state governments the urgent need for the digitization of registered documents and land records using secure, tamper-proof technologies such as blockchain.”
The bench said that according to experts, blockchain refers to a shared, digital record book (ledger) system to ensure that once a transaction of a sale or mortgage or like nature is recorded, it becomes “immutable and cryptographically secured”.
The court passed the order while deciding a land dispute emanating from Karnataka, where a man who held a property in Bidar sold his mortgaged property owing to his inability to repay a loan of ₹10,000 that he took way back in 1966. He signed a sale deed in 1971, allowing the sale purchaser to gain control over the property. However, in ‘1977, the original owner filed a suit questioning the sale deed. Though the additional district judge dismissed the suit in 1999, the same was reversed by the Karnataka high court in 2010, which led to the present proceedings.
Speaking in the context of the case where a dispute over a sale deed led to litigation that clogged the judicial system for over 48 years, justice Manmohan, writing the judgment for the bench, said, “Such reforms are essential to minimize the scourge of forgery and ‘clever drafting’ that clogs our judicial system.”
The bench added, “Registered documents must inspire absolute confidence to ensure the ease of doing business and to uphold the sanctity of property titles in a modern economy.”
The views of the bench are not new, as in November 2025, another bench of the top court led by justice PS Narsimha recommended that the Law Commission of India consider employing the “blockchain” system to make land records easily accessible and render sale transactions transparent and permanent in nature without being subjected to fraud and manipulation.
The November judgment said that courts must balance the right of citizens to buy and sell property with the duty cast on the governments to ensure there is integrity in transactions. While noting that laws such as the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, and the Registration Act, 1908, which constitute property law in the country, are largely of the colonial era, the court asked the Law Commission to study what amendments would be essential to these laws.
The judgment had also discussed ‘blockchain’, which can safely store land records in a digital time-stamped format, trace ownership titles and transactions, and eliminate practical difficulties of record-keeping.
In the present case, the top court set aside the February 2010 order of the Karnataka high court as the court held that the decision by the original owner to challenge the authenticity of the sale deed after seven years was an afterthought and dismissed his claim that he had repaid the loan consideration at a later point of time after the sale deed was issued.
