Book-block racket for registration

Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, December 18

A cloud-based online National Generic Document Registration System (NGDRS) rolled out by the Punjab Revenue Department in June this year for registration of documents to help applicants save time and to weed out corruption has become more of a headache. 

  The agents, purpotedly in connivance with the clerical staff, have been booking all slots in advance and have been further selling these at a premium, pocketing additional Rs 5,000 or so.

The modus operandi goes like this: a maximum of 90 appointments are given for registration of documents in a tehsil of Jalandhar as this is the number the office can handle on a single day. Since the filing of applications is a technical job, almost all applicants depend on computer operators sitting all around the district administrative complex and working as agents to help the applicants fill documents online.

When the form is filled and it is time to seek appointment, the computer operator shows the applicant that there is no slot available for  three-four days. Going by the tendency of the applicant to get the work done the same day, the operators ask for an extra amount for the ‘jugad’ that they will have to do.  They then get the particulars in the fake appointments edited in the software by filling in the names of new applicants and witnesses and within minutes the appointment becomes possible the same day.

A visit to the office of the Sub-Registrar Officer showed that even as it has full appointments for tehsil Jalandhar-1 daily, only half the number of documents ranging between 43 and 48 were being registered on a given day. SRO Maninder Singh agreed, “This has been the case because of fake appointments. Since there are no charges being levied for seeking an appointment, people have been taking appointment but not coming the same day.”

He intended to blame it on applicants and not his staff. But most observers feel the number of people missing an appointment should ideally not be more than 5 to 10 per cent. “If 50 per cent applicants are not turning up on a particular day, it raises suspicion and smacks of corruption,” said an advocate.

Surprisingly, even as the Revenue Department has fixed a one-hour slot for Tatkal Sewa with a fee of Rs 5,000 a day, it remains completely vacant. The documents to be registered include sale-purchase deeds, power of attorney, special  power of attorney and wills.

A similar nexus works for Learner Driving Licence application software Parivaahan too.