Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday directed officials to draft a new law for blockchain-based tokenisation of immovable properties. The directive also orders a SEBI, BSE, and NSE-staffed committee to prepare the legal framework.
Key Takeaways
- Maharashtra’s government, according to Moneycontrol, directed officials to draft a new law for blockchain-based tokenisation of immovable properties, a first for an Indian state.
- Officials must study global practices, per Fadnavis, so Maharashtra becomes the first State in India to introduce legislation of this nature.
- An expert committee with representatives from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), and National Stock Exchange (NSE) will help draft the framework.
- Maharashtra frames the law as a goal of becoming a US$1 trillion economy by 2030.
- Dubai already runs a live tokenised platform: tokenised assets are projected to represent up to 7% of Dubai’s real estate market by 2033, worth AED 60 billion ($16 billion).
Maharashtra Orders a Blockchain Land Law
Fadnavis chaired the meeting at Sahyadri Guest House to review the proposed DELTA (Maharashtra Digitisation and Exchange of Land Token Assets) legislation, the state’s formal name for the bill. He said the law should enable the productive use of the “latent value” in immovable properties while safeguarding public interest.
The current process of property transactions and using assets as collateral for loans can be time-consuming, Fadnavis said, and digitising that value through tokenisation is the state’s proposed fix. The proposed system should ensure a fully digital and legally protected process, with clear ownership rights for tokenised assets, he added.
The Chief Minister directed the Urban Development Department and Law and Judiciary Department to speed up work on the proposed legislation. No bill text exists yet, and officials are still assembling the committee this directive calls for.
Unlocking Property Value through the DELTA Act!
— Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) July 20, 2026
Chaired a meeting regarding the draft of ‘The Maharashtra Digitisation and Exchange of Land Token Asset Act (DELTA Act)’ in Mumbai, today.
As Maharashtra moves towards achieving the goal of becoming a US$1 trillion economy by… https://t.co/SVPXENl9f7
The Global Tokenisation Map Before Maharashtra
Property tokenisation is emerging globally as a means of creating new revenue opportunities, Fadnavis wrote, and that framing undersells how far ahead some jurisdictions already are. Dubai Land Department has launched the region’s first tokenized real estate investment project through the Prypco Mint platform, a government registry running a licensed platform rather than a private venture.
Transactions are carried out exclusively in UAE Dirhams, with no use of cryptocurrencies during the pilot phase, a design choice that kept Dubai’s launch inside conventional currency rails rather than crypto markets.
That distinction matters for Maharashtra’s drafting process. Dubai built a live secondary market inside a regulatory sandbox before writing sweeping legislation. Maharashtra is doing the opposite, legislating a framework before any platform or custody structure exists.
The Legal Hurdles Before Tokenised Land Trades
A Chief Minister’s directive is not a law, and the SEBI, BSE, and NSE-staffed committee that would write one does not exist yet. Officials were also directed to constitute an expert committee comprising representatives from SEBI, BSE, NSE, along with experienced professionals and domain experts, to prepare a comprehensive legislative framework.
That committee inherits a genuinely hard problem. Land in India sits under overlapping state registration law and central securities rules, and a token representing a share of a property needs to satisfy both without one framework quietly overriding the other. Officials were directed to study global laws, regulations and best practices before finalising an approach, pointing toward SEBI’s securities market experience shaping how tokenised property interests eventually get classified and traded.
Ownership rights are the crux. A tokenised deed still needs a clear legal owner of record if a dispute reaches an Indian court, and reconciling that with onchain settlement, where transfers finalise without a registrar in the loop, is a design problem that takes years, not a single committee sitting.
Implications for India’s Property Market
Maharashtra’s DELTA Act pitch ties tokenisation to its goal of becoming a US$1 trillion economy by 2030, treating it as a public finance tool rather than just a private investment product. Land already carries value nobody can easily spend or borrow against without a lengthy sale process, and a functioning token market could let owners unlock a slice of that value for financing.
That same digitise and unlock logic already drives India’s payments infrastructure, visible in how UPI Transaction Data tracks the country’s shift toward moving money and assets digitally. The gap between directive and deployment is where the real story sits. Dubai needed a regulatory sandbox, a licensed banking partner, and roughly a year to move from pilot to a secondary market, and Maharashtra has not yet named its committee members.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
This reads as an early stage policy signal from Maharashtra, not a market event. Directing officials to draft a bill and staff a committee differs meaningfully from operating a functioning token registry, and the SEBI, BSE, and NSE representation Fadnavis wants suggests the state expects property tokens to resemble regulated securities more than freely traded crypto assets.
The state’s own framing tells the real story. Property tax bases and stamp duty collections are notoriously hard for Indian states to modernise, and a state-backed token registry is a more direct fiscal lever than most crypto policy conversations produce. Whether that framework ends up looking like Dubai’s currency-only pilot or a fully tradable securities market depends on a committee that has not been seated yet, and on how India’s securities regulator chooses to treat a deed once it becomes a token.
