Raipur, the capital of India’s Chhattisgarh state, has entered the process of digitizing its property records with blockchain technology. In this project, India-based Zero-Knowledge (ZK) roll-up technology called AirChains is used.

Raipur Municipality issues over 8,000 construction permits, work orders and column development permits every year. AirChain was selected as a partner in the tender process opened by the municipality to move its records to the blockchain.

“We issue construction permits and we have had many problems with forgery of these documents before,” Abinash Mishra said about this process.

“Thanks to this solution we developed together with the AirChain team, we plan to carry out digital documentation of basic services produced by city governments, such as birth, death and marriage certificates, through blockchain.”

AirChains CEO Ankur Rakhi Sinha stated that this collaboration is the first use of Zero-Knowledge Fully Homomorphic Encryption (zk-FHE) technology in India.

“Zero-Knowledge (ZK) is used to prove something is true, while FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) allows performing calculations on encrypted data without giving any additional information,” Sinha wrote on his blog. This technology ensures the security of data and enables transactions and analysis.

Raipur Municipal Corporation has its own set of servers and all encryption keys are kept under the control of the government agency, said Sinha. Currently, AirChains, which is encrypting old certificates, has completed approximately 100,000 certificates with Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology. It is stated that when they go live, daily data will be added to the blockchain. A smart contract will be created for each construction permit, and each update will be automatically updated in these smart contracts.

Raipur Mayor Mishra stated that it usually takes “at least a month” to verify the facts in construction permit applications and that the time between banks’ loan approval and forwarding to the mayor is “seven days”. He said that they aim to reduce this period to three days. In this process, they aim to offer a faster and more reliable verification process.

“Certification must be secure and decentralization will be an area we will need to work on in the future,” Mishra said. “This is a small initiative we have taken. “I think many people will adopt this technology.”

AirChains has previously collaborated with other state authorities in India on similar projects. This collaboration provides an example of how blockchain technology can revolutionize local governments and public services.

Moreover, such projects demonstrate the potential of blockchain to increase security and transparency in government services. These developments may attract greater interest and investment in how the technology can be used in various fields.