About 4,600 property deals were registered across Tamil Nadu on Monday, almost a month after sub-registrar offices were reopened. However, it was just one-third of the average number of such registrations recorded every day before the total lockdown came into effect, but still more than expected.
This time, the government has capped the number of property registrations to 50% of the usual volume. Officials in the department said that the number of registrations was higher than the expected volume.
While about 2,400 registrations happened at till 1.30pm, it increased to 3,000 around 3pm and ended a little more than 4,600 by the end of the working day.
Noting that the registrations were more in the urban pockets of the state, a senior official said that the number would have hit 10,000 had private and public transport facilities been available. “We expected fewer number of registrations, but the final figure was more than our estimation,” an official said.
The registration department allowed every sub-registrar’s office to issue a maximum of 50 tokens. While there are 575 sub registrar offices across Tamil Nadu, a total of 28,750 tokens were permitted.
“On an average, we used to record 14,000 to 15,000 land registrations on a daily basis before the lockdown. On Monday, the number of registrations could not be on a par with the numbers in the pre-lockdown period because people are yet to come out for registrations as in the past,” the official added.
The government had already issued the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the sub-registrar’s offices that had resumed operations on Monday, after being closed on May 10 as part of measures to control the spread of Covid-19 during the second wave.