Property Registration involves recording a copy of a document and transferring the title in immovable property to the office of the Registrar. The manual process is time consuming and used to frequently lead to errors and misplacement of documents. So, in order to make the process citizen friendly, fast and free of errors, many states have chosen the ICT route and introduced online registration of property.

Vinay Thakur, Technical Director, NIC HQ vinay@nic.in

The State Department of Registration & Stamps is entrusted with the responsibility of registration and recording of various types of documents related to the transfer of immovable property. Each Sub-Registrar (SR) registers around 30-40 documents every day. At present, there are around 4000 SR offices in the country that indulge in activities such as sale of stamps, registration of documents, search of documents and other important activities. Though detailed information about functions and working procedures of the systems are as per Registration Act, 1908, the State Governments are authorised to make certain rules and procedures as per State Registration Manuals. The State Government fixes stamp duty and circle rates. The manual process involves maintenance of paper copy of all the registered documents in the large record rooms, which act as the repository of all documents. Further, the manual procedure of maintaining and registering property documents costs heavily to the Registration Department due to misclassification of documents, mis-representation of facts and other such losses. Searching of Reports, Records and issuance of Certificate copies and Non Encumbrance Certificates take long time and turns out to be a cumbersome task since it is done manually.

A typical Registration Record Room

Computerisation – the need of the hour Lately a few states have taken initiatives in computerising the need-based functions. However, in order to offer exemplary citizen services, all macro and micro level issues need to be addressed. This is possible through optimal use of ICT. The immediate requirements of Registration Department are: (a) Online availability of deed formats. (b) Guidance values should be made available on web; and periodically updated for calculation of stamp duty. (c) Abolition of use of stamp papers; stamp duty payments through banks should be the part of the system. (d) The entire process of registration to be completed in a short time (30 minutes), including scanning of deeds and generation of reports. (e) Issue of certified copies of registered deeds, and non encumbrance certificates in a short time, say 15 minutes. (f) Automatic generation of mutation notices to the parties. (g) Backend integration with the Land records updating and reconciliation system.

Registration Process

Director General, NIC inaugurating implementation of Registration Project in Bihar

Initiatives by the States Around 20 States have taken the initiative of computerising registration process with technical support from NIC. More than 1800 SR offices out of the total 4000 are computerised. The major projects running across the Country are cited below:

SCORE (Bihar)- (System for Computerized Registration) has been implemented in all sub-registrar offices of Bihar in records time of 3 months.

Process flow of SCORE system

SRO Staff being trained on Application Software

PRERNA (Uttar Pradesh): PRERNA is one stop citizen-centric electronic solution for all kinds of property registration. It functions as a single window delivery of e-services like - market value assistance and on demand generation of encumbrance certificate, etc.

CARD (AP)- Computer Aided Administration of Registration Department is a comprehensive software package automating the process of registration in Andhra Pradesh. The project is operational in all 387 SROs for past 7 years. All SROs are connected to the central server through this software.

Panjeeyan (Assam)- The project has been implemented in seven districts of Assam. Under this project, local youths of the State with computer background are hired and assigned the tasks of data entry, processing, scanning and printing of agreements. Youngsters are hired on a contractual basic and their payments are made from the revenue generated from the processing of the deeds.

Document Entry Screen (Assam)

DORIS (Delhi): Property Registration System has been implemented in 12 SR offices in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. This System also provide online interface for Law valuation.

ReD (Gujarat) – The Registration of Documents (ReD) system is implemented in all 150 sub-registrar offices in the State of Gujarat. The Online system for calculation of property values has been made available in public domain.

Market Value Calculator

HALRIS#HARIS (Haryana)- HARLIS#HARIS has been developed with the objective of providing a single window access to citizen services like land records and registration. The system operates on an integrated software with 2D Bar Code enhanced security and implemented for all Tehsils & Sub-Tehsils.

HIMRIS (HP): The system requires only one visit to SRO office for getting the activities related to deed registration. The rest of the registration process can be done online.

STAR (TN)- The Registration department provides many registration services like guideline values, non-encumbrance certificate etc through this portal. The system has been implemented in 450 SR Offices.

Package for Effective Administration of Registration Laws - PEARL (Kerala): The system has been implemented in all Sub-registrar offices. The system provides transparent, efficient and vibrant public interface of SR office to offer filing, searching, accounting and reporting services.

PRISM (Punjab)- Property Registration Information System Module- PRISM provides services for on the spot registration, capturing photographs of all the parties and printing at the backside of registered document to avoid frauds in identification, proper valuation of the properties and minimizing the revenue leakage and generation of Index Registers and other MIS reports.

e-Pathiram (Puducherry)- It has been has been implemented as a scanning and archival system, for electronic filing of the registered documents which are easier to store, retrieve and render speedier service to the citizens.

CORD (West Bengal) – CORD caters to the need of the Registration offices of the State of West Bengal. It has been developed under the Indian Stamps Act and Indian Registration Act incorporating all its amendments followed by the State till date. At present, a registration office provides two types of services, namely- registration service and the post registration service. Registration service involves registering the document that is being presented now while post registration service is to know about the details of a registered document at a later stage.

Some of the other projects implemented are SARITA (Maharashtra), KAVERI (Karnataka), KROWN (Uttrakhand). The State of Sikkim, Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Tripura have also initiated the process for Computerisation of Registration.

Common Initiatives All the States has been advised by the Department of Land Resources, Government of India to implement system with following services levels. §Provide web based access to citizens, Registration Officers with user-friendly and integrated services relating to Registration.

§Administer a system of record keeping, which is secure, easily retrievable and tamper-proof.

§Implement an efficient system of property valuation and registration.

§Maintain all data in integrated electronic form, so that it is accessible to all stake-holders anytime, anywhere.

§Implement systems and processes for secure maintenance and updation of data.

§Establish a sustainable operating model for the system.

§Integrated with Land Records System

E-Stamping: Some States have done away with Stamp papers and are using franking machines, Bank draft payments and E-Stamping etc. E-Stamping is being tested on pilot basis in Gujarat where stamp duty is being paid online and details of payments and properties have been made available to SR offices online to register the deeds. The details of properties and stamp duty are being printed on quality paper with watermarks. All the printed payment certificates are given unique numbers. Once this is fully operational, printing of stamp papers are not required and online compilation of revenue could be done on the click of mouse.

Simplified Deed Formats: Some States have designed simplified 2-3 page deed documents. The first page will contain property details and second page contains parties' details & few related declarations.

Property Valuation– Circle rates are prescribed by the States and updated on regular intervals. The states of Gujarat, Delhi and Bihar have provided online calculators for property and land valuation.

Integration with Land Records – the future One of the most common mutations is on account of a sale transaction on agricultural land, originating from the Sub-Registrar's office. In majority of the States, Land Records are being maintained at the Tehsil Office whereas Registration of documents is being done at a separate office of Sub Registrar. As a result, there is a time gap in the transmission of registration details to Tehsil Office for effecting the mutations. The initiation of Computerisation of Land Records Scheme has yielded good results and many States are using digitised land records data for offering RoR services. However, mutation in most of the states takes lots of time for its consignment into digital form. Even in States, where Computerisation of Land Records and Property Registration have both been completed, these have been done on a standalone basis with minimal interface between the two processes. Therefore, Some States such as Haryana, Karnataka etc. have started integration of both the processes for automatically generating mutation notices for updation of land records. The same has to be undertaken in all states to ensure genuine transations and regular updation of land records.

The treasured dream is to create a "virtual registration office" on the Internet, which will serve as a self-service portal for most of the activities that are presently done by visiting the offices physically. This will bring citizens closer to governance, thereby bringing greater transparency in functioning, and efficient as well as prompt service of revenue and departments registration.