When it comes to recording and tracking properties, urban areas in India are notorious for frauds. Deficiency in urban planning and infrastructure development results in property records being rarely accurate or up-to-date. With the pressure of an ever increasing population, the government is often incapable of accurate data collection for mandatory surveys and census activities, compelling several cities in India to necessarily take recourse to technology to streamline their property records
and transactions.
In most cities, the norm generally is to issue khata certificates as proof of property ownership and compliance, over the years becoming a mandatory legal document of sorts for property transactions. A khata, (account in Hindi) is a legal document confirming a property’s legitimacy and ownership, an official record for identifying and validating a land holding. A khata certificate has now become a mandatory requirement for tax payments, licences and loan approvals. Unfortunately, the manual khata system that is followed is in dire need of drastic transformation to improve transparency, reduce corruption, streamline processes and make property information more accessible to the public.
The highly deficient manual system had to inevitably make way for an e-khata system that could modernise property management, enhance efficiency, and improve the overall experience for citizens dealing with land and property transactions. This is what the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has set out to do by bringing in approximately five lakh properties within its ambit enabling a supposedly hassle-free system for issuing e-khatas. A pioneer of sorts, Bengaluru uses block-chain technology to protect and store e-khata data in various nodes and connect the nodes digitally through a chain. The BBMP digitalised manual property khatas and uploaded them online calling them ‘draft khatas’.
This digital record keeping, an absolute necessity for a city of 14 million should result in an efficient digital storage of land and property records, reducing the need for physical documentation. The property records can be accessed online, for residents and officials to retrieve information. Transparency through the use of digital records would minimise the chances of tampering and corruption, thus reducing opacity in property transactions. The e-khata system can also resolve property disputes by providing clear and accessible records to the public, as citizens can now verify property details, ownership, and encumbrances themselves.
Transactions can become faster, the accessibility helping streamline the process of property registration and transfer, reducing bureaucratic delays. Further by linking the portal with other government services, tax collection, urban planning and development can now get integrated seamlessly.
Although the objectives behind the implementation of the e-khata system are undoubtedly laudable, it’s the implementation that is the biggest bugbear! The draft e-khatas have to be populated with a property owner’s data and linked to the ubiquitous Aadhaar number on ‘e-Aasthi’, a web-based platform. Scanned copies of the ‘absolute sale deed’ and other relevant documents confirming ownership of the property have to be tagged to the e-khata. To ensure further protection, data like electricity and water consumer numbers and approved building plans by populating various nodes are tagged and digitally connected to the property owner. To facilitate populating the data, citizen service centres, service providers that provide services from a single location have been roped in to assist in completing the e-Aasthi portal requirements.
BBMP’s chief commissioner and special commissioner for revenue have made considerable efforts to make the data entry system faceless and contactless so that the citizen does not come in direct contact with the government’s revenue officers, notorious for causing harassment, for bureaucratic lethargy and for corruption, but certain things
never change.
When I tried to get an e- khata for myself, the draft e-khata on the e-Aasthi portal has most property owner’s name wrongly entered forcing citizens to get them corrected by an assistant revenue officer (ARO). Besides having the final authority to approve or reject a downloadable e-khata, the ARO needs to be referred to for the flimsiest of reasons. A silver lining is a computer savvy ‘case worker’ attached to each ARO office whom I surprisingly found very helpful, but he too needs an ARO approval. The ARO thus remains the key decision maker and citizens need to keep running circles around him. BBMP’s chief commissioner should visit one of his ARO offices incognito and see for himself how powers delegated to perform immediate corrections are not being utilised by the AROs either out of indecisiveness or incompetence making timelines go haywire!
Nevertheless, despite the considerable effort one needs to get an e-khata, it cannot be denied that implementing this modern system will ensure Bengaluru gets an efficient urban governance experience, a modern property management system with enhanced transparency.
(Priyan R Naik is a columnist and an independent journalist
based in Bengaluru.)
