Registration of lands gathers pace

Registration of land related transactions gathered momentum ever since the government relaxed the restrictions since November last year.

The sub-registrar’s offices are said to have received huge number of applications since the government allowed registration of agricultural lands through Dharani and non-agricultural properties in the normal mode. An estimated 1.10 lakh sale deeds are said to have been registered for open plots between December 21 and February 10 fetching revenue of ₹ 375.99 crore to the government. The department earned another ₹ 80.99 crore through other charges taking the total revenue to ₹ 456 crore in the last one and a half month. This assumes significance as the government set a target of ₹ 10,000 crore revenue for the current financial year, but could not achieve at least half of it in the three quarters. Registrations in Ranga Reddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri, abutting the State Capital, are said to be particularly impressive going by the high volume of transactions witnessed in these two districts.

While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down registration processes, the government’s decision to halt registration owing to enactment of new revenue laws brought the process to a grinding halt. As a result, there were apprehensions that the government would fall well short of the expectations during the current year. The situation however improved significantly since the government allowed registration of non-agricultural properties through normal process following the legal issues faced due to implementation of Dharani.

The department had since then assigned 2,46,101 documents of which 2,20,209 were scanned and returned to the parties. In the process, the department earned revenue of ₹ 1,565.32 crore raising 2.64 lakh challans through these transactions. The number of transactions is significantly higher on Dharani too with the portal registering 1.26 lakh applications pertaining to registrations/mutations from December till Saturday and another 5,714 for NALA conversions. Of these, 1.19 lakh registrations/mutations had been approved and process relating to 5,256 cases of NALA conversions completed. The portal said the average registration time was 60 minutes while it was just 24 minutes for NALA conversion. Officials are confident that much of the revenue gap that was observed since the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath would be covered as there is almost one-and-half month left for the completion of the financial year.