A technical snag has hit the property registration server, including that for leave-and-licence, following which fewer registrations have taken place over the last four days, according to Anand Gupta, chairperson, housing and RERA committee of the Builders Association of India (BAI).
He said, “I enquired about the matter with a few officers of the registration department and they have confirmed it. In fact, it is an issue across the state.” Abdul, who handles all real-estate deals in Mumbai, told the FPJ, “Most of the leave-and-licence process is done online. But with the server facing a major technical issue, registrations only take place for a few hours daily.”
From 9 am to 11 am, the server is functional, after which it goes down, which has been the case for the last four days, he explained. An official from the Mumbai city stamp duty and registration department office, who did not wish to be named, confirmed that the server was in dire need of troubleshooting, for which measures were being taken.
Another stakeholder, Usman Kurwshi of Kureshi Associates, too said that work which could be accomplished in 10-15 minutes in the normal course now took more than a couple of hours.
Along with stamp duty registration, all other property-related work has become time-consuming, with the server being down. Gupta points out that the government should resolve the issue as early as possible, to avoid loss of time and revenue.
“The state earns a major chunk of its revenue through stamp duty and other registration fees. The system should be made seamless. Despite this sector being the major source of revenue generation, the entire process seems to be neglected or not improved,” he observed.
In May, more than 10,000 properties were registered in Mumbai alone, as per the data available with the stamp duty and registration office, netting Rs 726.85 crore revenue in stamp duty fees for the state exchequer. However, as of June 5, only 1,414 property registrations were recorded in Mumbai, generating Rs 95.92 crore in revenue so far.
