Nearly 46,000 properties in Mysuru city and surrounding areas are devoid of authentic documents and are not eligible to receive the Property Register (PR) cards under the Urban Property Ownership Records (UPOR) project.
The UPOR was launched in Mysuru in 2010 and entails digitizing the property documents embedded with spatial details based on GIS survey and land mapping, documenting mutation if any in the property records, ownership details, etc and will help curb fraudulent deals in land transactions.
As on date, 3, 23, 616 properties in Mysuru and 42 villages covered under the UPOR, have been surveyed and the authorities have received 2,18,884 documents. Of these, 108,508 final PR cards are ready for issue and 49,383 PR final PR cards have already been issued. In case of those who have not collected the draft PR cards, the authorities have launched a campaign to individually contact the addressee.
But in case of nearly 46,000 properties, the owners have not been able to provide authentic documents pertaining to the properties. “Some have submitted documents on bond papers of ₹5 or ₹10 none of which is legally tenable’’, said the officials. As a result the authorities have put on hold the issue of final PR cards till the government takes a call on it.
This makes any transaction related to such properties untenable. Though the PR card is not yet made compulsory, the UPOR office in the city tends to receive inquiries from potential buyers to ascertain if the property on which they propose to invest was legally valid. Based on the UPOR survey, the Revenue department managed to recovered vast swathe of government land that was encroached.
Though there are nearly 3.23 lakh properties in the project’s jurisdictional area and nearly 2.18 lakh applications have been collected, there were nearly 105,000 vacant sites on which no transaction has taken place nor were the authorities in a position to trace the owners to seek the documents.
“But within the heart of the city there have been many cases in which property has been inherited from forefathers and yet have been issued PR cards as the documents were in order’’, said the officials.
Sources in the Revenue Department said as per section 133 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, the property card or Form 13 issued under the UPOR project was to be considered the only valid ownership record once made compulsory. But PR card is yet to be made mandatory for property-related transactions though the coverage and penetration has increased over the years.
