The 49th Annual General Meeting of Institution of Surveyors was held in New Delhi in the last week of November. In his inaugural address, Lt Gen Ranjit Singh, SM, Engineer-in- Chief and Senior Col Comdt, the Corps of Engineers said Institution of Surveyors during its last fifty five years of existence, has brought various survey disciplines under one umbrella. In 1949, the country boasted of only 400 surveyors when the idea for this institute was mooted by the then Surveyor General of India. The institute started with only two sub divisions ie Land survey and Bldg and Quantity Survey. With the advent of time there has been manifold increase in the number of survey disciplines under the institute. He said that Land Survey forms the very basis of land records and their holdings. Indian Surveyors over the ages have done yeoman service in drawing up these records initially on cloth and paper and now digitally. Although we have a long way to go before we reach the goal of all such records being digitized but we have at least embarked on this road. While appreciating the need of speedy development of the surveying profession, he emphasized that the training facilioties for the growth of the profession need to be accelerated and strengthened since
the number of qualifi ed surveyors in various disciplines are not available in accordance with the demand. The meeting was also addressed by Mr K K Chakrabarti, President, Institution of Surveyors, Brig P K Bhatnagar, AVSM (retd), Outgoing President, and by Brig P N Kaul.