Karnataka: Digital property record project at 29 sub-registrar offices

The state government has picked 29 sub-registrar offices, including a dozen in Bengaluru, for a project in which legacy property records will be scanned to create digital versions to preserve them and prevent fraud.

This was a budget promise made by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

Once the project is done, all registered property records will be available online -- some of them dating back to 1856-57 -- for public access.

Under the project, all existing property records up to 2004 will be scanned and digitised for which Rs 10 crore has been provided, the government has said in an order. Records from 2003 onwards, such as encumbrance certificates, are already available in digital format.

“Scanning of all legacy registered permanent records will be done in a phased manner to prevent their bogus, falsified, fraudulent creation,” Bommai had said in his 2022-23 budget.

The project will take forward a similar scheme called Surabhi (Sukshma Rakshana Abhilekagalu) that the government did in 2018. Under Surabhi, the government took up a pilot project in the Gandhinagar sub-registrar office, which is among the oldest property records repositories in Karnataka.

At Gandhinagar, some 33 lakh pages of 4.25 lakh property documents from 7,514 volumes were scanned and digitised.

“There are handwritten records stored in large volumes. After scanning them, we enter metadata that will help us fetch it electronically,” a senior official involved in the project said, adding that the tender process is underway.

There are 12 crore pages of legacy records spread across 253 sub-registrar offices in Karnataka. The oldest living property record belongs to the erstwhile princely state of Mysore.

“Unless these documents are digitised, searching for them becomes difficult,” Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps Mamatha B R told DH. “Having these documents online helps us verify titles easily and check the authenticity of transactions. For citizens, it will ease access to encumbrances,” she said.