More articles by

Rekha Dixit
Rekha Dixit

SURVEY OF INDIA

Nakshe portal offers free download of India maps

Union minister for science and technology Dr Harsh Vardhan launched the portal Nakshe, which will make available 3,000 topographic maps of the country for free to the public. Aadhaar identification will be required to access the maps, the minister said. 

nakshe Survey of India's Nakshe portal

The move is part of an initiative to free data from the shrouds of secrecy. The launch was part of the ongoing celebrations to observe the 250th anniversary of the Survey of India. 

These maps are on a scale of 1:50,000 and part of what is known as open series maps. The SOI will subsequently release another batch of around 700 maps shortly. The total country is covered by 5,700 maps, of which around 2,000 cannot be accessed by the public due to security issues. The ones which have been made available are those which do not have boundary issues and do not have data on sensitive installations. 

The minister said that the effort was to make data easily available for people, who no longer will require to go through the tedious process of applying for maps of an area before starting any developmental or construction work. These maps give detailed topographic information of both natural relief as well as man-made structures.  

“There is an existing law which says that any information which is compiled with public money should be made available to the public. I was surprised to learn how difficult it was to access these maps, and I requested the SOI last year to work out a programme to enable people to access them,'' said Harsh Vardhan. 

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Topics : #Science

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