CHENNAI: Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Monday launched mandatory presence-less registration for the first sale of plots and first sale of flats in apartment projects, a move developers say could cut registration time while reducing the need to visit registration offices.
Under the new system, those who want to register should create a login ID on department website and submit property documents online. The seller, buyer and witnesses should upload their Aadhaar details.
Registrars should register the property documents submitted online within 24 hours or send them for correction or reject them, by following the existing procedures. Documents returned for correction should be resubmitted within 30 days.
Once registration is complete, the registrar should put his digital signature and make them available in the user’s ID. Certified copies can be collected after 60 days. The government has also built in additional safeguards against document tampering and forgery.
The registration endorsement will use a dynamic, randomly generated combination of five colours, with the combination varying for each document. The colour digital version of the registered document will remain available online for 60 days, while certified copies issued subsequently will be in black and white. The colour coding is intended to allow the owner to verify the authenticity of the original registration endorsement.
Each page of the document will also carry a QR code containing the document number, nature of the document and registration date. The digital signature of the registering officer will allow physical documents to be checked against the digitally signed version. Any tampering with the digital document will be indicated by an ‘X’ during digital-signature verification, providing an additional layer of security.
Ranjeeth Rathod, managing director of DRA, said the registration itself now takes roughly three to five minutes — covering document processing, biometric authentication, approval and download — against a previous round trip that could run to two hours in travel alone, plus document processing.
The initiative was launched by the CM at the secretariat in the presence of Commercial Taxes and Registration Minister T Lokesh Tamilselvan and other senior officials.
