
BENGALURU: The revenue department suspects “foul play” over property registrations at sub-registrar offices across the state via the Kaveri portal, almost coming to a standstill since February 1 and continuing on Tuesday too.
With just around 7% of the usual number of registrations taking place, the department is yet to find a solution to the technical glitch. Compounding public agony is that for the last fortnight, the encumbrance certificate (document detailing the ownership history of any property) could not be obtained by the public on their own from the system.
The objective behind taking the registration process fully online was to make the whole process transparent with fees paid only online. It would eliminate the role of middlemen and the “fee” (bribe) demanded to facilitate the process.
A senior revenue official told TNIE, “Unlike in the past, the glitch this time is a serious one, and our technical team is still unable to rectify it. We strongly suspect foul play. A fortnight ago, the registration portal had around 1.5 lakh views. The average number of views generally clocked is around 15,000 per day. We initially understood it as the public having a keen interest in purchasing property. But the trend continued with the views even touching up to 2 lakh for the subsequent days. This put enormous pressure on the system.” He added that technical teams were working continuously to get to the bottom of this unprecedented disruption.
Another official conceded that “deliberate mischief” could be at play. “The 256 sub-registrar offices under the stamps and registration department used to register anywhere between 8,000 and 9,000 properties daily. Our revenue per day averaged between Rs 75 crore and Rs 80 crore. It even crossed Rs 100 crore on a few days. On Monday (Feb 3), the staff could carry out only 560 registrations, and our revenue was just Rs 15 crore. The trend continued on Tuesday (Feb 4) too,” he said.
Anyone who wants to buy a property crosschecks the EC to know the complete background of the purchases made earlier, he explained. “Sub-registrars also check the history of the property. The major glitch has made it impossible to carry out EC checks by both sides, and this is quite fishy,” he stressed.
The conspiracy theory seemed to find many takers online who responded to Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda’s post on X regarding the issue. His post on Monday said, “We regret the difficulties the public are facing in obtaining ECs and carrying out registrations. Our e-governance department is continuously working to solve the problems. We fully understand the difficulties. We are working overtime to overcome the IT system challenges.”
Sripathi, a finance professional, alleged in a post: “Your babus make this technical complication deliberately so that their intervention is sought (and in the process demand extra money from the public).