The state government’s move for a complete shift to online property registration has caused concern for the state exchequer at a time when the real estate sector is showing signs of recovery.
The department of stamps and registration last month decided to migrate property registration entirely online and the portal Kaveri Online Services was strengthened. Inaugurated in 2018, the service is currently limited to sub-registrar offices and its officials across 250 locations for uploading documents for buyers.
The plan was to extend it to the entire state after implementing the pilot project in areas coming under three sub-registrar offices of Tumakuru, Jala (Bengaluru Rural) and Chincholi (Belagavi).
The portal developed glitches ever since it went live on November 2 and there have been user complaints like denial of card payment, session expiry and error messages after completing all steps.
As Pune-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) tried to fix the bugs, the government was forced to keep the project in abeyance. C-DAC told the government it will try to sort out the problems over the next 45 days.
Undervaluing of properties was a major concern in the offline process. While a buyer has to pay 5% of stamp charges and registration duty on the selling price, which is mostly above the guidance value fixed by the government, sellers and buyers connive to show the selling price low and pay lesser duty.
Festive fervour
Technical glitches haven’t deterred buyers during the festive season.
After the slowdown during post-pandemic lockdownc, property registration started picking up in August — during the Ganesha festival — and improved in September-October thanks to Dasara.
Stakeholders say it will continue in November due to Deepavali festivities.
In these three months, 7.2 lakh documents were registered fetching Rs 2,735 crore compared to 6.5 documents registered and Rs 2,720 crore in the same period last year.
MS Shankar, general secretary, Forum for Peoples’ Collective Efforts, believes revenue collection is disproportionate to registration and is perhaps linked to quicker economic recovery in rural areas where large-scale property purchases may have happened.
“Since guidance value is less compared to urban pockets in Bengaluru, the cumulative revenue is lesser,” he said.