In a move that aims to bring in more transparency, stamp out illegal transactions and cut out middlemen, property documents will now have a digital avatar and uploaded on DigiLocker. The khata certificate issued by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will have 46 kinds of information, including photo of the property, photo of the owner, property identity number (PID), apart from registration information. This will help curb menace of fake documents being created for fraudulent property transactions.
After launching the new e-Aashthi portal through which the BBMP hopes to streamline property record management and establish electronic integration with registration, civic Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad told reporters here on Friday that the pilot had been implemented in three wards in Shantinagar division — Neelasandra, Shantinagar, and Shantalanagar. He said after the pilot of two weeks, glitches, if any, would be set right and the system rolled out in the remaining 97 wards in the core zones (East, West, and South) in a phased manner.
“In the three wards, officials concerned have already been directed to stop issuing handwritten khata certificates,” he said, and added that property records could be created under e-Aasthi from the existing khata master database. He added that the process has been put in place to undertake updation following transactions, such as sale, inheritance, partition, gift, will, land acquisition, khata amalgamation/bifurcation. The new khatas, apart from having 46 kinds of information, would have digital signatures and would be DigiLocker enabled. The earlier version of khata certificate and khata extract had 18 kinds of information.
Since the e-Aasthi and Kaveri system of the Department of Stamps and Registration is already linked, any mutation (change in ownership) can be initiated automatically. “A notice will be generated from the system automatically by initiating a transaction after receiving registration details electronically. Officials will have three days to verify/hear objections. There is also a facility to upload supporting documents wherever applicable, following which the mutation/khata extract will be generated,” said Mr. Prasad.
The Commissioner termed this as a milestone for the civic body and added that since online applications for khata transfer, amalgamation, bifurcation, etc. under Sakala began early 2018, as many as 2.87 lakh applications have been processed thus far.
BBMP Administrator Gaurav Gupta said the civic body was already providing many services online, such as trade licences, birth and death certificates, and building plan sanctions. “With e-Aasthi, we are taking this one step further,” he said.
