Century-old land records to go online to help buyers before purchase

To ensure ease of business for corporates by providing encumbrance-free and guaranteed land titles, the department of registration and stamps is planning to make available online soft copies of century-old properties and land records. This will help companies and individuals to search online for the history of the land that is being bought and ensure that the property purchased by them has an assured title.

"This is part of the ease of doing business," Dr Ramaswami N, inspector general of registration and controller of stamps, told dna. He added that this would make available details of whether there were encumbrances or legal problems with the land that was sought to be purchased.

"100% of records since 2002 are available online," said Ramaswami, adding that they were digitising records from 1985 to 2002, which was the pre-computerisation stage. "Of these, 51% have been uploaded and remaining will (be online) by December-end."

Informing that around 3,000 downloads were done daily, he also said these records are available on the e-search facility on the department's website.

"Now, there is no concept (of guarantee of title), (this is) presumptive value, and not guarantee of title," he admitted.

"My plan is to put (online) all documents in the photo registry. We have documents since 1920s," said Ramaswami, stating that this would take a year to complete. He added that colonial era British civil servant GSA Anderson, who had carried out land settlement works and initiated revenue manuals, had started the process of copying these documents by hand, and later, they were photographed. After that, these images were scanned in micro-films. From 1985 onwards, these old documents were scanned.

"We have (roped in an) agency to convert these films (and documents) to PDF files. Some photographs have small fonts, so we have asked them to see if the font size can be increased to make them readable and upload them," said Ramaswami.

These documents are available in many registration offices, including in Mumbai, but the department will now put them up online for people to access them easily and in a soft format. A World Bank team has also been given a presentation in this regard.

"This will enable (people) to trace the history of the land and reveal the encumbrances and legal issues tied to it," he said, adding that land or property buyers will be able to get assured title guarantee during purchase.

Ramaswami pointed out that this would be on the lines of the standards in other countries, such as the 'Torrens title' system of land title registry in Canada and Australia.

"We are working with the land records department," he said, adding that the systems in the two departments were able to communicate with each other and fetch records online for the e-mutation system, which is part of land records modernisation. This system has been launched in 147 talukas.