Governor vs Karnataka govt on property registration reform

Revenue dept drafts response after Gehlot returns Bill

Bengaluru: Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot has stalled the Siddaramaiah government’s ambitious plan to introduce faceless property registrations, which may lead to a fresh bout of confrontation with Raj Bhavan amid already strained relations. 

Gehlot has sent back the Registration (Karnataka Amendment) Bill expressing safety concerns over property registrations going faceless, saying it could lead to more frauds. 

The Bill, passed by the legislature in February this year and which Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda is bullish about, introduces a reform with which physical appearance at sub-registrar offices will not be required during property registrations.

It also integrates software so that paper or handwritten 'khatas' are not accepted to prevent frauds.

Returning the Bill, Gehlot stated that it is "necessary to ascertain" how safe the faceless registration process will be "even though it is based on Aadhaar". 

"If faceless registration is implemented, then the process of issuing originally signed (with ink) copy will be stopped and digitally signed copies will be in force. This may lead to multi-financing activities and also fraudulent activities in the process of registration (sic)," Gehlot stated and added: "This issue needs to be addressed carefully."

Gowda's department has drafted its response to Raj Bhavan, dismissing Gehlot's concerns. 

In fact, Gowda told DH that the delay in approving the Bill resulted in Madhya Pradesh stealing the march over Karnataka in implementing a similar reform this year. 

"The Union government itself has recommended such reforms under the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DIRLMP)," Gowda said. 

"Today, every financial transaction of the state and Union governments is digitally signed. Many government decisions are digitally signed. We trust this because (files) move from one secure source to another," Gowda explained. 

Gowda also clarified that the government is not doing away with the current manual process. 

The minister pointed out that Gehlot has also opposed the government's move to integrate software to avoid bogus khatas. 

"BDA property transactions have started taking place with its database integrated. Now, if someone claims that s/he has a BDA khata, we'll run a query on the database to verify. The next step will be to update the khata with the buyer's name," Gowda said. 

Software integration is important to curb revenue layouts, which Gowda said are coming up because of bogus documents. "We'll integrate Kaveri (registration database) with BDA, BBMP and rural local bodies," he said. 

The government has already proposed punishing sub-registrars who register properties illegally. "What the law said was that sub-registrars aren't required to verify the genuineness of documents. More than punishing sub-registrars, our interest is to ensure good governance," Gowda said.