CHENNAI: From September 15, all banks and financial institutions in Tamil Nadu will have to register two categories of mortgage-related documents - Memorandum of Deposit of Title Deeds (MODT) and Deed of Receipt which are issued when a loan is secured against property and when that loan is repaid respectively - through its “presenceless” digital registration system, an order issued by the state’s commercial taxes and registration department on Thursday stated.
The move extends Phase II of “anywhere registration,” a scheme under the state’s Project STAR 3.0 digital registration platform that was inaugurated on August 17. Phase I had already mandated “presenceless” filing for first-sale deposit deeds tied to plot and flat sales by developers.
The commercial taxes minister had announced the mortgage-document mandate in the state Assembly on September 7. Thursday’s order by J Kumaragurubaran, commercial taxes department secretary, operationalises that announcement.
The presenceless framework incorporates digital signatures from the registering authority and QR-coded verification on each page of a registered document.
The inspector general of registration noted that both document types are already enabled for presenceless filing since January 22, 2026, meaning the mandate does not introduce new infrastructure but compels fuller use of existing capacity.
For encumbrance cert
According to the G.O., the aim is to ensure mortgage entries are reflected in encumbrance certificates that banks rely on to ascertain whether a property is free of claims before giving loans.