‘Difficult to give flawless property papers’
Only if land grab bids and ‘double documents’ were enough to trouble the property owners/buyers, the state registration department shocked the Madras high court by saying a controversial statement that it is difficult to issue encumbrance certificates without any fault.
An encumbrance certificate (EC) is the basic document which reveals the current status of an immovable property. The EC is supposed to contain correct ownership details of a piece of property and informs the applicant of the status of the property by detailing that whether it is encumbered or mortgaged in favour of a bank or any individual.
However, responding to an anticipatory bail petition of a landowner who, somehow, purchased another person’s property as the EC did not reflect latest ownership, the inspector-general of registration said: “The ECs are prepared by making search based on survey numbers, boundaries, extent, period, etc. It is because of mismatch in present survey number and old survey number and boundaries, encumbrance certificates, at times, do not reflect all the encumbrances relating to a property. This has engaged the department in debate for quite some time.”
Hearing the petition, Justice S Nagamuthu, however, said he could not agree with the submission. Noting that there had been a significant increase in the number of cases arising out of improper ECs issued by the registration department, the judge said: “In this modern computer world, I do not believe it would be impossible to evolve a comprehensive mechanism by which the ECs could be issued flawlessly, reflecting all encumbrances.”
Giving up
Blaming the mismatch of the survey numbers, the TN registration dept told the court that an accurate EC was difficult to produce. However, it also said that it would soon come up with a better system.
Source: The Times of India
anticipatory bail petition, Bank, Buyers, EC, encumbrance certificates, immovable property, Madras, Madras High Court, mortgaged, Property Owners
