Buying property? Encumbrance certificates at click of mouse

Buying property? Encumbrance certificates at click of mouse
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: If the Stamps and Registration Department has its way, encumbrance certificates (EC) - an official document indicating history of a property's ownership - will be available at the click of a mouse.

The encumbrance papers are the most sought after document from sub-registrar's offices as property transactions invariably begin with a buyer seeking to know the ownership history of a property.

The Stamps & Registration Department's move follows its successful implementation of KAVERI - Karnataka Valuation and E-Registration Initiative. An interesting highlight of the new e-initiative is that an encumbrance certificates of any property anywhere in Karnataka can be had from any sub-registrar's office.

As a first step towards this, the department has already begun the computerisation of over 86 lakh properties in Bangalore urban district.

The pilot is expected to be completed in June this year.

''We are in the middle of computing ECs with a property history for the last 15 years.

Once Bangalore urban project is implemented, then it will be extended to all over the State in a phased manner,'' a senior official in the Stamps and Registration Department said.

Getting an EC under present system is not only laborious but also time consuming.

Those who want EC of a particular property have to give a requisition letter and pay a specified fee at the local sub-registrar office in whose jurisdiction the property is located.

After this, it would take at least two weeks to compile the property transactions as the information will be spread over a number of files,'' the officer said.

The data of ECs of all sub-registrar offices will be connected to the District Registrar's office in the next phase.

After this, ECs of all the district offices will be connected to the central office from where any SR or district registrar office can access the ECs through a central server, the officer said.

All this process is likely to take a few years as it will take some time to compute ECs of all properties across the State.

Computing ECs of each and every property in the State is a massive exercise as the total number of properties in Karnataka run into cores.

''Imagine compiling a 15 year history of each and every property. It is time consuming and painstaking process,'' the officer said.