Now, property documents at the click of a mouse

After Mumbai, IGR to put up Pune's property documents from 2002-11 on its website.

In a week's time, Puneites looking to buy or rent out property in the city will have it easy. The Inspectorate General of Registration (IGR) is set to upload the documents on its website, which will enable citizens to download registered property documents. As part of its e-governance initiative, the scheme was launched in Mumbai last month. Pune is next in line, followed by Thane.

“We needed space to accommodate the documents for which we had communicated to the National Informatics Centre. For Mumbai, we got 5 terabytes. For Pune, we have been given 12 terabytes and this will give us a lot of space. From next week, citizens should be able to download the documents area wise,” said Inspector General, IGR, S Chockalingam.

With this initiative, he said, citizens would no longer have to depend on real estate agents or make multiple trips to registration offices for hard copies, adding that the feature would be available under the e-search facility on the IGR website.

With the scheme to be launched in the entire district, Pune will be covered first followed by rural areas and all 20 registration offices will be covered. At present, the department has details of registered transactions of properties from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2011. “Work is on to collect last year's data too. The office is keen on putting up as much data as possible once they have the space allotted by the NIC to its website http://igrmaharashtra.gov.in.

The office maintained that citizens could feed in the details of the area and download a document in less than 30 minutes. On how citizens will benefit in selecting a property, officials said the e-search facility would display fields to enter the city survey number (milkat number or plot number) and the revenue village concerned, enabling the citizen to understand the property transaction history. The documents can be downloaded from the site for free initially, but an amount may be charged for the service later on.

Real estate agents, however, don't think the facility will hit their business much. “Such initiatives are good, but it will depend on how many people will access the same from the website,” said Varun Bhatia, an agent. On the other hand, citizens are happy that they would get a feel of the market even before visiting the registration office. “Downloading the form will help us understand the property rates better rather than just depend on the real estate agent,” said a citizen from Camp area.

Source: http://expressindia.indianexpress.com/latest-news/now-property-documents-at-the-click-of-a-mouse/1073971/