Despite the Madras high court pulling up state government officials over delay in disposal of applications for patta and TSLR transfers, people are still running from pillar to post over the issue. Registration and revenue departments, which are the key agencies engaged in the process, are shifting goal posts.
Take the case of K R Bharath, a resident of West Mambalam, who is unable to get the patta for a housing plot that was registered in a layout at Panambakkam village in Tiruvallur district three months ago. The registration officials informed him that patta (TSLR) would be available in three days, after the property was registered on August 28.
But, the ordeals began for Bharath as he had to shuttle between the sub registrar office at Perumbakkam and the Village Administrative Office multiple times to verify the status of patta transfer.
“After 85 days of inquiries and multiple visits, I was informed by a revenue official in the village that no application had been received from the sub registrar office and asked me to apply for patta through the e-Sevai Centre,” he said. Bharath further claimed that middlemen offered to complete the process within a couple of days. “I do not want to grease anyone’s palm. But I wonder whether this is a reason for the inordinate delay in facilitating the patta transfer,” he said.
The incident comes a month after the Madurai bench of Madras high court took a serious view of the pendency of patta transfer applications. As per a report filed by the director of survey and settlement, 6.3 lakh applications involving sub-division (ISD) and 1.4 lakh applications not involving sub-division (NISD) were pending till July 31.
After the court’s intervention, the state informed that 1.6 lakh ISD applications and 96.1% NISD applications were disposed of as of September 21. When contacted, revenue department sources said that the fault lay with the sub registrar offices for not sending the link for patta transfers, wherein some incomplete applications also land that makes processing the applications cumbersome.
The registration department denied the charges. “It is next to impossible that a patta transfer application has not reached the revenue department official concerned online because the process is automatic once a property gets registered,” a registration department official said.
Social activist and secretary of People’s Awareness Association Nanganallur, V Rama Rao, who has taken up issues pertaining to patta transfers in the past, said that such applications should be disposed of within 30 days by government departments. “The official delaying the disposal of applications must be fined Rs100 for every day of delay like under the RTI Act,” he said.
Source: Times of India Chennai Nov 2020