Encumbrance certificate error: TN panel to fix software glitch

 C Shivakumar @ CHENNAI:

If a piece of land is sold more than five times in Tamil Nadu, chances are that the encumbrance certificate (EC) for the land or the survey number may not reflect all the transactions. The problem is because of a technical glitch in the ‘Tamil Nilam’ software used by the revenue department.

According to sources, the software could record only five transactions using alphanumeric (alphabets and numbers) codes and further transactions are recorded as sub-division of the land. In such cases, the EC of the survey number for the land will not reflect the correct transaction.
This may lead to difficulty in getting building plan and other approvals and bank loans, sources said. Because of the glitch, it has become difficult for buyers to trace the transaction history of the property beyond 30 years, the sources said.

The state revenue department gets 1.5 lakh applications per year for patta transfers involving sub-division of plots. Currently, state government departments use two software applications for land transactions. While land records are maintained by the revenue department in a centralised database called ‘Tamil Nilam’, the registration department uses Star 3.0 software for registration of properties. Currently, a mutation software is being used to carry out mutations of land parcels necessitated because of sale of asset, gift deeds, legal partition among heirs and based on court orders. These applications are processed through ‘Tamil Nilam’ software for issuing patta with or without sub-division.

Registration department sources said that work on integration of the two software (Tamil Nilam and Star) is on. The revenue department is also thinking of sharing land records and mutation data with departments like rural department, municipal, and administration and housing and urban development departments. This would be helpful in seamlessly accessing OSR land data, roads, and land details of public utilities, government and local bodies.

Sources said the state government is planning to set up a taskforce or monitoring committee to ensure effective use of land record database for better public service delivery. The committee to be headed by the revenue secretary will have 14 members and may meet once in two months. It would focus on Aadhaar seeding of records in survey and registration departments and sharing of land records data with state entities.