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Law to Protect Property Takeover
Just registering your property and ensuring that your ownership rights make it to the records of the land-owning agencies like MCD and DDA is not enough to safeguard your right as an owner. To protect your right to the title and to check the growing cases of properties in the capital being targeted for takeovers, an expert team has come up with the first draft of a property titling law. The plan is to set up a central titling authority. It will maintain complete records of all properties and scrutinise the details provided to identify and decide on the real owner. Each property will be issued a unique identification number. A tribunal will be set up for resolving all disputes relating to immovable property in Delhi.
This is expected to prevent fraudulent ownership claims as the records will be available to prove ownership in court. Under the existing system, property ownership details are not available with the authorities concerned. However, real estate observers and sources in the government say getting all records together at one place will be tough and may take many years as there are multiple land-owning agencies in Delhi DDA, MCD, NDMC and gram sabhas. Moreover, the properties in unauthorised colonies are not yet registered. A presentation was made before the Delhi cabinet, led by chief minister Sheila Dikshit, on Monday. After the meeting, the CM spoke on the need for a titling law but stressed that the process should be simple.
An expert team has been working on the draft which has been discussed in seven meetings between February 2008 and May 2009 with a committe headed by chief secretary Rakesh Mehta. The government now plans to hold consultations with stakeholders next month and then return to the cabinet with a final draft. If approved, the Bill will go to Delhi assembly and then to the Centre before it can be enacted as a law. Senior officials feel there is a long way to go. There is likely to be a transition period of seven years after the law is enacted and the process of creating records of existing properties through a survey begins. During this period, properties will be granted a provisional tile. “Titling laws exist all over Europe. Britain didn’t have such a law earlier but it has also put a property titling law in place. The US too has them,” said Mehta.
According to officials, under the current system, after purchase of a property, the owner first gets the sale deed registered with the sub-registrar. Then he applies for mutation to the land-owning agency to get the title of the property transferred in his name. But since there is no foolproof mechanism for scrutiny, the officials bank on affidavits filed by the owners. But it has been observed that the same property has been registered more than once by different owners.
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