RTI promises to make life easier for citizens trying to procure title deed. State chief information commissioner (SIC) Suresh Joshi has directed the department to put up details of all the registered documents on the department’s website, mentioning details like name and date of registration, number of documents registered and the status of the document. The Right To Information Act has helped many citizens beat bureaucratic red tape since it came into force in 2005. Now it promises to make life easier for citizens trying to procure title deed documents of their residential and commercial properties from offices of the department of registration and stamps across the state.
“If the information commission’s order is not complied with, the applicant can approach the SIC again and he will be compensated, while the Public Information Officer (PIO) will be penalized,’’ said Shailesh Gandhi, central information commissioner. Joshi told that every document registered by the department falls under the purview of the RTI Act and they are bound to publicize these documents. “There is also a danger of losing the documents as they are kept in the office for years together. The department has a responsibility to send the original documents as soon as the work is done,’’ he said.
The SIC order came on May 13, 2010, after Borivli resident Deepak Furia filed an RTI query in August 2009, with the department of registration and s t a m p s asking for basic procedures of procuring the title deed documents from stamp duty registrar offices. When both the PIO and the first appellate authority denied him information, he appealed to the state information commission. “When the case came up for hearing with SIC, officials admitted that over one lakh original documents prior to 2002 were pending at various offices. The officials justified this saying that they though had sent many documents to the title deed owners, they were returned back,” Furia said.
Joshi noted the RTI query touched upon a larger issue and it is necessary for the additional chief secretary (revenue and rehabilitation department) to take genuine interest to help citizens get back the original documents duly registered, which are being held back by the department. The SIC added that prior to 2002, the Pune office maintained records for photo registry and scanned these documents. Before registering these documents, the sub-registrars had to verify the proper valuation of the property and then the documents were ordered for registration.
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