Background

The Registration Department of the Government of Andhra Pradesh performs the functions of registration of deeds, valuation of immovable property, collection of revenue (stamp duty and registration fee), preservation of copies of documents, issuance of certified copies of documents, issue of encumbrance certificates and registration of societies, firms, marriages etc. The department has 387 Sub Registrar’s Offices (SRO) in 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh. The gross revenue earned by the department is Rs.12 billion. The manual systems in all the activities caused long delays, red-tape and corrupt practices. The Computer-Aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) project was conceptualized to computerize all the activities and procedures of the Registration Department. A pilot was conducted at two SROs in August-September, 1997. The project was started on 4 November 1998. Presently, the project covers the whole state of Andhra Pradesh.

Objectives and Goals

• To simplify the registration procedure.
• To enhance the speed, reliability and consistency of the system.
• To provide transparency in valuation.
• To replace copying/filing systems with imaging.
• To preserve documents on CDs.
• To automate all back-office functions.
• To enable a system that enables setting time and quality standards.
• To smoothen the government-citizen interface.

Planning

After the success of the two pilots, the project was scaled up in two phases. In the year 2000, the first phase was extended to 181 SROs. In the year 2001, the second phase was extended to 249 SROs. By the time of the study, all 387 SROs were covered under the CARD project.

Services Provided

All the services of the Registration Department are provided to citizens in a short period for nominal user charges. The most popular services are registration of deeds, issue of encumbrance certificates and market value searches. Prevalent user charges are: Rs 95 for registration of documents (maximum of 10 pages with Rs 5 for every additional page), Rs 10 for motor vehicle (MV) search certificates, Rs 20 for encumberancy certificates and Rs 20 for certified copies of the documents.

Target Group and Intended Beneficiaries

The intended beneficiaries are all the citizens who want to register their deeds, get a valuation of their immovable property, certified copies of documents, encumbrance certificates and to register societies, firms, marriages, etc.

Institutional Arrangements

The Inspector General of Registration and Stamps heads the project, supported by the Technical Director (of the National Information Centre or NIC), Chief Information Officer and Deputy Inspector General. Each District Registrar is responsible for the functioning of CARD in the SROs under the district. One official from each DRO, at the rank of a senior clerk, takes up the task of DPO for two to five SROs, after intensive training. Each SRO has at least two Data Entry Operators (one clerk and one section writer). All the hardware and maintenance of the LAN is handled by WIPRO, a private IT company, which has been awarded a maintenance contract for five years. All the software upgrades are done by the NIC.

Technologies

The project works on a LAN. On every 387 SRO CARD office centres there is provision for one server and four computers (three for B category SRO centres, two for C, D, E category SRO centres and one for F category centres). Each centre is provided with a scanner, a laser printer, a dot matrix printer and a UPS. The server uses Linux Operating System along with Oracle 8i for databases. The client end uses Developer 2000 whereas the front end is Window 98/95 Operating System as well as Window, 98 for Scanning. 

The uptime of the system is more than 98 percent, owing to the effective maintenance contract. Each district office is linked through a network, through dial-up connectivity to the Inspector General of Registration and Stamps office server. The software takes care of security through a username and password and also maintains an audit for all activities. Automatic backup of documents operates at client end and at server end.

Primary Access Points

Primary access points for the citizens are the 387 SROs in the state.

Capacity Building

The project is implemented and managed by in-house staff. There are two clerks in all SROs. In all, 1,400 clerks/section writers have been given two-week training to take up the job of Data Entry Operators; 76 senior clerks have been given 10-week training to take up the job of Data Processing Operator job; 67 Assistant District Registrars have been given three-week training; and 40 District Registrars have been given one-week training. Roughly, 3,811 man weeks (76 man years) of training have been imparted so far. Technical staff has also been given training on the CARD software. User manuals on CARD and the imaging software have also been issued.

Constraints and Implementation Challenges

Some legislation such as the Registration and Stamps Act, Urban Land Ceiling Act, Surplus Agriculture Land Act, Endowment Property Act, and the Property Act needed a change to accommodate the new procedure. The Government of Andhra Pradesh issued a governmental circular to provide the legal sanction for the scanned documents. All the registered documents and deeds of the previous 13 years had to be coded and digitized to ensure encumbrance certificates were valid. The properties change names, type, size and utility over time and there are discrepancies in different departmental documents. The codification of all the property types was a huge task. Similarly, guidelines for the costs of the land and buildings as well as for the different purposes and areas covered had to be digitized. The guidelines for the market rates for Municipal Corporation, Municipality, other urban areas, major Gram Panchayats, minor Gram Panchayats, and Cantonment Board were decided differently for 80 land types (such as residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture, dry land etc). The documents and deeds registered since 1983 has already been scanned and stored in a CD format. The problem of shifting from the manual system to the new system was solved by computerizing all processes and procedures required at all the steps from acknowledgement of receipt to issue of registered document. More than 5,000 government staff were trained in the new system. Maintenance of hardware, especially in remote rural areas, was arranged for by signing a maintenance contract with WIPRO. Power cuts of more than 12 hours were mitigated by installing UPSs at all the offices.

Project Outcomes

The project has increased the speed of registering property and producing related documents. Previously, citizens had to wait for three to seven days to obtain encumbrance certificates. After the CARD system was implemented, they received such certificates in just 10 minutes. Similarly, certified copies of the documents were issued after seven days, while through CARD, citizens can now get them in only 15 minutes. The time taken to register a deed or a document has been reduced from three to seven days to one day. The CARD project registers 1.18 million documents and serves 5 million citizens in a year. Since the inception of the project, 4 million documents have been registered, 2.16 million encumberance certificates have been issued, 3.73 million registration check slips have been issued, and 75,907 certified copies have been provided to the public.

Key Lessons Learnt

The project has been successfully implemented state-wide at a minimum cost. It shows that e-government solutions can be implemented in a span of three to four years, even with innumerable complications and procedures. The project also proves the hypothesis that e-government could be implemented by just training the existing staff, without adding new technical staff. Another lesson is that in the absence of PPP, public finances can be mobilized to get projects implemented.

Sustainability

The project has improved the government-citizen interface. Around Rs 300 million has been spent on the project, but no impact assessment had been carried out by the time of the study. The increase in revenue collection through CARD has still not been proven, but the project has generated more than it has invested since 1999. Rs 380 million have been generated from the registration of documents, Rs 37 million from the issuance of registration check slips, Rs 43 million from encumbancy certificates and Rs 1 million from certified copies. Up to the time of the study, the project had earned Rs 475 million against a one-time investment of Rs 300 million. The project will become further sustainable if all the services could be successfully made available on-line.

Replication and Scaling Up

The project has been already implemented in all the SRO centres in the state. Now, it is planned to network all the SRO centres to the district Registrar Offices through 64  Kbps dedicated leased lines whereas all the District Registrar Offices (DROs) with state servers through 128  Kbps dedicated leased lines. It is also planned to install network-monitoring software in the system as well as to introduce storage of scanned documents in the form of microfilms. Similarly, the department aims to provide record of documents on the Web. The long-term vision is to provide all the services of the Registration Departments through the Web.

The project has been replicated in the states of Maharashtra and Punjab with few modifications. In Maharashtra, the whole project is implemented in an innovative PPP, in which government provides data, premises and service operators whereas the private partner takes care of the hardware/software/network support and management of the facility.

Recommendations

Presently, besides photocopies, four copies of a CD of the registered documents are stored (two for SRO, one for DRO and one for IGRAS). It is recommended that  the triplication of storing and archiving documents be eliminated. There seems to be an extra computer at each SRO office:  offices with four computers have three operators, those with three computers have two operators and those with two computers have one operator. The reason for the provision of one extra computer at all 387 SRO centres is not clear. It is recommended that this proportion be rationalized according to workload. All the hardware provided to 103 SROs in the year 2000 needs to be changed or urgently upgraded. It is also recommended that the software should be upgraded so that scanned/digitized photographs of the people involved in the registration process could be electronically pasted onto the original and stored documents. This will dramatically improve the authenticity of the document and the procedures. There is no monitoring of MIS in the SRO offices on daily or weekly basis. The MIS monitoring system needs to be improved at DRO and IGRAS levels. Before spending Rs 50 million on networking SRO and DRO offices with 64 and 128  Kbps lease lines, it is strongly recommended that a feasibility study be carried out.

Human Interest Stories

In a Few Seconds, Please

Thirty-six  year old S.K. Gase works as an Estate Manager in Nagarjuna Consultancy. His employer bought 10.32 acres of land in Datanpally village, and  his office sent him to discover the market value of the property, stamp duty and registration fees for the documentation. Gase came to Chevella SRO and submitted his application. Within 30 seconds, he learnt that the value of the property was Rs 29,000 per acre. He also got the information that he had to pay Rs1, 740 as Stamp Duty, Rs 1,450 as Transfer Duty Tax and Rs 145 as Registration Fee.

“My Job has Become so Hassle Free”

Venkateshwar Reddy, a 38 year old Recovery Executive at Rajdhani Urban Cooperative Bank, has been visiting many SRO offices every day to learn about the encumberancy of mortgaged properties of the bank. He has been doing this for 10 years. “My job was very difficult, as I was unable to put up reports to the bank management within the time limit. The SRO used to take many days to give this information to me.” His work is now completed in just 10 minutes.

“From 100-page Document-writing Every Day to a Click of the Button”

C. Hanumanthrao has been working as section writer for the Registration and Stamps Department for the last 18 years. Before CARD, he used to do writing/copying of 100 pages of registered documents every day. His fingers had started showing symptoms of arthritis. After the introduction of CARD, he saves scanned copies of registered documents on CDs in just a minute.

Contact Information

Emails: card@ap.nic.in, card@ap.gov.in, card@igrsmail.ap.gov.in

Websites

http://www.ap.nic.in/CARD

http://igrs.ap.gov.in