The Revenue Department has started a massive exercise to correct errors in the digitised land records.
The exercise comes after landowners have said they have been made to run from pillar to post — and pay bribes in some cases — to get their records corrected in the digitised pattas. The task is particularly huge in Chennai and its neighbouring districts.
Directions issued
A senior official of the Revenue Department said directions were issued for a mass correction of spelling errors and factual mistakes.
The records, which were digitised a few years ago, were found to have spelling mistakes, changes in the names and wrong street numbers.
Meeting with Tahsildars
The official said that since the process of correction was complicated, the Revenue Divisional Officers (RDOs) were asked to call a meeting of the Tahsildars (three to four Tahsildars come under one RDO).
The RDOs and the Tahsildars would verify the entries, irrespective of the complaints. The process started this month, but no time frame was set for its completion.
The official said the number of complaints about mistakes was high in Chennai and in the neighbouring districts of Thiruvallur, Kancheepuram and Chengalpattu, as sale transactions were more in these districts. In villages and other parts of the State, the sale of land and subdivided property was few, and so the errors were fewer. Irrespective of the number of complaints, the Department would check each digitised record against the document copies and correct the errors.
The Department had also begun automatic name transfer of pattas after the sale deeds were executed in the Department of Registration. The automatic name transfer was launched in February this year by linking the land records with the Department of Registration. Buyers have been facing hardships to get the name transfer once the sale is completed. The name transfer is a simple process, unless any subdivision is involved, but buyers are made to wait for long.
The official of the Revenue Department said the name transfer of pattas in cases where no subdivision of land was involved would happen at the registration office after the sale was completed. The system was simplified with minimum human intervention. However, since the contact numbers of the buyers were not captured in “most” cases, the alerts through SMS did not reach the beneficiaries. “We are advising officials of the Registration Department to get the details of the buyers, along with their contact numbers, for sending the SMS for the name transfer of pattas,” he said.
