Possibility of Title Registration for Registering Lands in Nepal: Legal Perspective

Land is one of the integral natural resources for sustaining life on the earth. It provides food and shelter to all the living things on the earth. For humans, it is an immovable and economically important asset. Hence for the efficient management of land property, humans register lands using different mechanisms. In Nepal improved deed registration with half tenure security is used. This paper focuses on the possibility of the implementation of title registration for registering lands in Nepal from a legal perspective.

Three countries namely Austria from Europe, Australia from Australia and Malaysia from Asia were studied for extracting the compulsory and additional features of title registration system. Legally bonded title with full guarantee from the state, clear determination of ownerships and interests on land, mathematically accurate fixed boundary with reference marks etc. were found to be the compulsory features of title registration. The additional features included soil evaluation based on yearly average yield estimation, taxation based on soil evaluation, provisional registration of titles, subsidies for farmers, rural and urban planning, disaster risk areas zoning, 3D Cadastre, multipurpose cadastre, etc. In this research, the legal provisions of Nepal to address these features were studied and it was found that except multipurpose cadastre all the features are addressed by the laws of Nepal though inadequately. However, these inadequacies can be addressed in the subsequent versions of the respective laws.

Hence it was concluded that the title registration is legally feasible, however focus should be on the implementation part devised with concrete plans. The system can be implemented in bit-by-bit basis choosing a certain districts or regions as piloting area.

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