Explainer: How Easy Registry aims to curb corruption
Well over three years into its term, the Aam Aadmi Party government is falling back on its core agenda of curbing corruption — be it arresting officials or their own party MLA, Raman Arora, or launching a citizen-centric portal that aims to eliminate corruption in tehsil offices.
The launch of ‘Easy Registry’ comes close on the heels of the crackdown on tehsildars and other revenue officials. While many officials were suspended in March when they failed to call off their protest, most have now been transferred to “non-profitable” centres, while the government has posted the probationary revenue officers of the 2023-24 batch in the prime tehsil offices.
Why the crackdown
AAP stormed to power in March 2022 on the promise of bringing change and clean governance. In the first few months after taking over, the government initiated a robust anti-corruption campaign, but the momentum slowly died down.
The defeat in the Delhi Assembly poll in February seems to have come as a rude shock to the party, and spurred a return to its core agenda of breaking drug cartels, improving public education and healthcare systems, and stemming corruption.
Tehsil offices, to start with
There is much symbolism attached to launching the Easy Registry portal. The tehsil office is amongst the most visited public offices. It is also, in public perception, considered a den of corruption. With just two years left for the term, AAP’s top leadership has decided to bring transparency in the revenue offices to create a narrative of a crackdown on corruption.
About the scheme
In tehsil offices, the power balance has always been in favour of tehsildars and other revenue officers, who would often reject property sale deeds for “extraneous considerations”. It is open secret that no sale deed gets registered without monetary considerations. With the launch of the Easy Registry portal, the tehsildar will be able to raise objections just once, and online, within 48 hours of submission of documents.
“The objection will also be intimated to the Deputy Commissioner, Sub-Divisional Magistrate and the Financial Commissioner Revenue, creating an audit trail and making the tehsildar answerable,” says Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue) Anurag Verma. If any financial consideration is sought, there is an inbuilt provision where property buyers and sellers can report it through a dedicated link.
A desk, he says, is also being created in each tehsil office to be manned by a retired revenue officer, deed writer and advocate, who will write the sale deeds for consumers for just Rs 550.
How is scheme different
In 2017, the government had introduced an online property registration project, using the National Generic Software for Document Registration. “In this project, while people could submit their forms online and get time slots for registration, the tehsildars had the power to reject their property registration after physical scrutiny of documents,” says Verma. Under the Easy Registry scheme, a person has the choice to register the sale description at any Sub-Registrar office in the district where the property lies. Also, a pre-scrutiny of documents has been introduced, wherein the registrar can raise objections (if any) only in the 48-hour time window.
Scope for expansion
So far, the new software has been launched only in Mohali district, where 100 sale deeds are registered everyday. It will be launched across Punjab by August. The software will also be used for clocking the land mutation and demarcation.
Punjab