CHENNAI: Residents need not longer run from pillar to post for land-related paperwork like patta transfers, land boundary measurements, and village maps. Now they are just a click away as the survey and settlement directorate has digitised land record management.
Earlier the process was cumbersome for the buyer and seller, and required a compulsory visit to the taluk office for patta transfer, requesting measurement of land and for all land record based services. Now the entire process is online, cuts short the time required to get the documents and weeds out corruption to an extent.
This was made possible due to the integration of software used by the revenue and registration departments. The automatic mutation or transfer of patta that does not involve subdivisions is one of the key outcomes of the integration.
The title change in the patta is made within a minute after the buyer registers the the property he purchased without any subdivision. This is called fulfilled patta and can be downloade from https://eservices(dot)tn(dot)gov(dot)in by entering the relevant details. The buyer will get an SMS.
However, if one person is subdividing his land parcel and selling it to many, the application will land in the login of the village administrative officer or surveyor. The patta will be issued within 30 days.
“On average, 85,000 patta registrations happen in sub-registrar offices across the state, and of this 33,000 are fulfilled pattas. Till date, we have issued 5.75 lakhs instantaneously,” said Madhusudhan Reddy, Director of Survey and Settlement. The purchaser’s name will also appear instantly on the encumbrance certificate.
Since last year, the transfer of Natham Patta has also been digitsed and till date, over 49,333 applications have been disposed of. “There are a total of 302 rural taluks in Tamil Nadu, and out of this, 211 have been computerised and the remaining 91 will be done in three months,” explained Reddy.
Another benefit of the digitisation is that land owners will not need to run from pillar to post and wait for months to get their land measured. This process is called the F-Line measurement, and the process is online.
“Upon submitting the request, the applicant will get an ID to track his request and acknowledgement. He or she will get an SMS on the status too. We have made it more accountable and transparent,” added Reddy. This process was introduced in November 2023, and to date, 24,713 applications have been disposed of. Satish Galley, a social activist, said that the patta transfer does not happen immediately. “In some cases, it does not happen immediately. Sub-division transfer takes even more time. Officials must monitor the pending applications and rectify the glitches,” he explained.
