BANGALORE: After a slide for three consecutive years owing to economic slowdown, the Department of Stamps and Registration may record a revenue collection of over Rs 4,800 crore for the year 2011-12. The department had a target of Rs 4,250 crore at the beginning of the current financial year. Compared to the corresponding period last year it has recorded a growth of over 21 per cent.
At the end of the first week of March 2012, the revenue collection was Rs 4457 crore.
Speaking to Express, Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps V Chandrashekhar said the department collected about Rs 3,798 crore for the year 2010-11.
“Bangalore urban district which has contributed a lion-share of collection accounted about 73 per cent of the total revenue generated by the department,” Chandrashekhar said.
He said the year 2011-12 witnessed a spur in the real estate activities resulting in registration of over 15.08 lakh properties as against about 12 lakh properties in the previous year.
According to him, Stamp and the Registration is the third largest revenue generating department in the state government.
He added apart from a jump in the real estate activities and transfer of land and properties, the revision of guidance value mainly in the Bangalore urban district also helped in the record collection. “The able guidance and motivation of the Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, who also holds the finance portfolio helped to surpass the revenue collection target,” he said.
He added to streamline the working conditions several reform measures were implemented including computerisation and networking of all the 243 sub-registrar offices among others. The department sent Rs 90 crore worth proposal for the purpose.
According to him, both for meeting plan and non-plan expenditures, the department presented a budget of over Rs 50 crore. Chandrashekhar disclosed that the Union government instructed to lower the present stamp duty from 6 to 5 per cent as a pre-condition for release of funds under the JNNRUM for improving the infrastructure in Bangalore and Mysore.
“At present 6.78 per cent of duty is being levied including cess for the property registration in the state,” he said.
He added that to address delay issues and bring in transparency several steps were undertaken. “The present system of scanning the documents and taking the photocopy of both the buyer and seller’s thumb impression has gone a long way in the prevention of fudging of documents,” he said. The proposal to network all the sub-registrar offices across the state on the line of ECS in the nationalised banks would help in bringing accuracy, he added.