HYDERABAD: Even after the implementation of the Dharani portal, several departments failed to share details of prohibited lands with the Registration department, according to the CAG report on the Revenue sector for the year ending March 2021, which was tabled in the Assembly on Thursday.
Complete details of door number, survey/sub survey/part number, extent, etc., of prohibited properties were not captured. Provision for capturing boundaries of the prohibited properties or boundaries of the part of the prohibited property and possession details were not available in CARD Centralised Architecture (CCA).
Further, 598 (0.05%) out of 11.69 lakh agricultural prohibited properties were assigned ‘0’ (zero) survey number. The lack of such vital information poses problems in deciding the authenticity of the property or part of the property to be registered.
The Registration and Stamps department replied (March 2022) that it was the user department and information regarding prohibited properties was not provided by other departments such as Revenue, Endowment, Waqf etc., as per the prescribed format. However, the CAG said that reply was not acceptable, as the prohibited list provided by the Revenue department contained a description of the boundaries of properties, which could not be captured due to a lack of provision in CCA.
The department stated (March 2022) during the Exit Conference that Form-III and Form-IV were not relevant since every survey number is assigned with a monetary value in Dharani.
However, as the cases pointed out by the audit include details pertaining to Form-I and Form-II, the same would be re-examined.
Pointing out the gaps in prohibited properties data, the CAG said that the prohibited properties notified under Section 22A of the Registration Act 1908 are not to be sold without de-notifying them on the receipt of a ‘No Objection Certificate’ from the Revenue/court authorities.
As per Departmental Instructions 17, deputy inspectors general are responsible for reconciling the entries of the prohibited list (electronic and manual) of properties every quarter (January, March, June and September) with the SROs concerned and report the status to CIG in January and June every year. As of March 2020, Rs 12.90 lakh properties were listed as prohibited in CCA.
Anomalies galore
CCA accepts parts of prohibited properties for registration even though the full survey number was shown as prohibited as per the list of prohibited properties, which poses the risk of prohibited properties being registered.
An analysis of the data revealed that the date of purchase of stamp paper was after the date of execution of the documents in 13,077 cases of consideration value worth Rs 1,652.79 crore, while in 850 cases, worth Rs 140.93 crore, the date of purchase of stamp paper was after the presentation of documents in violation of Rule 26 (h) of Registration Rules.