Clean the mess created by Dharani portal: BJP to Telangana government

Hyderabad: Telangana BJP threatened to launch an agitation if the State government fails to roll back implementation of property registration through Dharani portal till shortcomings in the system are rectified.

Addressing media here on Saturday, party national leader and BJP Madhya Pradesh in-charge P Muralidhar Rao said that the stated objectives of the implementation of Dharani portal are good. But, the software being developed has miserably failed to meet the objectives.

The State government said that the new system is advanced than the Computer-Aided Administration of Registrations Department (CAARD) that was being implemented before the launch of Dharani portal.

The Dharani is developed by Telangana State Online, a subsidiary of TCS. And, it claimed advanced features like slot booking, computer-generated documents without the discretionary interference by the officials (Sub-Registrar), and an automatic mutation of the transaction.

For implementing this the State government has launched the Dharani portal after three months of stalling the entire registrations in the State.

However, the whole exercise turned disastrous for the State and posing untold hardships to people, small and big builders, stamp vendors and those from the MSME sector, he added.

Rao said that the Registration Act is central and is a subject in the concurrent list of the constitution.

As per the said act stamp duty has a perpetual validity. But, small stamp vendors in the State have been facing the following new changes brought by launching Dharni portal.

He said annually, 14 lakh out of 16 lakh registration are non-agriculture properties, comprising about 80 per cent of the total registrations in the State. Fetching Rs 6,700 crore revenue to the State. The registration of agriculture and non-agriculture lands being carried at the mandal revenue offices and 142 independent sub-registrar offices have come to grinding halt causing loss of revenue to the State as well as to the people.

He said that the Dharani system does not provide checking the legal status of property tracking the link documents at the time of sale. In turn, it is turning a boon for the fraudster, land grabbers and people registering fake documents.

What is more shocking is that a sub-registrar has no authority to refuse to register a document unless it falls under only one exception given under section 22A of the act. Further, there is no provision for General Power of Attorney and Special Power of Attorney on behalf of people to carry out registrations. Similarly, there is no facility for the guardian on behalf of the minors.

If any person could not attend physically due to emergencies and other unavoidable circumstances, then, the stamp duty paid has been retained. And, people will have to pay afresh to book a slot, he pointed out.

Similarly, the documents issued after registrations are not fulfilling the legal validity to accept the same for the pledge and provide loans against property. Similarly, people are facing problems in the registration of the sale of combined and join properties.

Out of 100 documents the Dharani system is showing only three categories for the registrations. Also, lack of proper training to the staff added to the troubles and the staff remained clueless on how to handle any document or registration falling outside those provided for in the Dharani system.