Thanks to the government’s decision to revert to land registrations through the old system (Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department), registrations of the non-agricultural lands is progressing smoothly and the number of transactions is increasing by the day.
The resumption of registration process after a gap of almost 100 days is however unlikely to fill the gap in the target set for the current year and the quantum achieved so far. Problems for the sector started from the day the Legislature enacted two legislations aimed at overhaul of the Revenue Administration through the introduction of Dharani portal as one-stop solution for land-related issues. The registrations through the portal were launched on November 2 for agricultural lands and December 14 for the non-agricultural lands without addressing the technical issues. According to experts, there is no scope for registration of documents pertaining to different transactions and the software has been designed to handle four transactions – sale deeds, family partition deed, court decree and mortgage.
There were then network connectivity related issues in many places that delayed proceedings while it took time to ensure full-fledged functioning of the servers to speed up the transactions. The new software however was reportedly not accepting entry of details of the link documents pertaining to the property as also the details pertaining to the payments made like cheque/DD numbers. Survey numbers of the properties were not being displayed in the documents in spite of their entry into the software while no option is provided for inclusion of the built-up area, number of floors and the type of construction. One of the biggest concern of the real estate dealers is problems related to properties that were hitherto classified under gram panchayats and were subsequently merged to create new municipalities. The problem is said to be more acute in respect of the group housing projects and apartments where the software is not allowing entry of multiple names of buyers. Insistence on the property tax index number is reportedly proving a major hurdle as there is no scope of the PTIN in case of houses under construction as the index will be generated for only properties which are completed.
Builders who met the Cabinet sub-committee headed by R&B Minister Vemula Prashanth Reddy lamented that the portal is generating its own sale deed format which was not in conformity with the RERA guidelines and there was insistence on payment of full consideration without an option for semi-finished registrations.
