Say, you are in Hyderabad and own a slice of property in Visakhapatnam. You want to check its status in terms of registration and encumbrance.
The usual way is to go to Visakhapatnam, visit the Sub-registrar office, wait for your turn and make the request.
The process then takes it own sweet time, while you sweat it outside waiting or in some instances wait for a couple of days to get the details.
Come April-end and the Stamps and Registration Department promises to do away with the cumbersome process and make the data available in minutes.
The online registration concept that presently is undergoing trials will have you visit the local office here or facilities such as APOnline and your request will be made to the central server which in turn will forward it to the Sub-registrar at Visakhapatnam. And once the request is processed there, the document/certificate you want is handed over here itself.
“It should take very little time and one can obtain a digitally signed encumbrance certificate within minutes,” says K. Madhusudana Rao, Commissioner and Inspector General of Registrations and Stamps.
There have been charges of more than one encumbrance certificates issued, more than one market value for a given property and so many others that those seeking to buy or sell property have been facing. In a major exercise for the last several months, the department has been in the process of cleaning the data available to clear errors and establishing a network with all the 438 sub-registrar offices in the State.
According to the officials, the entire data for last 17 years starting from 1995 has been sifted and compiled. “Now we are in a position to place all the data related to the period 1995-2011 on the web with a digitised signature for the entire State,” he says.
With EC Action Plan, missing pieces and links were connected and the data has been pruned as well to correct possible errors for information from the year 1995. “For the concept of Online and Anywhere Registration, this is very important and we have attended to it,” the official says. The digitisation of data apart from facilitating easier public interface will also usher in transparency and take care of any avoidable confusion.
For purposes of trial run, the central software has been introduced in four offices in December last and more offices added last week.
The idea is to link another 100 offices in the first week of next month and by April-end, switch to online mode for a total of 107 sub-registrar offices in the State.
“These have been connected to the central server and being monitored for access time and assessed for issues such as safety and updation.
The entire approach is being scrutinised and we are confident of going online by next month-end,” the official adds.