KOCHI: The Registration Department’s plan to permit individuals to prepare deeds of buying and selling of properties without the help of licensed document writers has evoked a mixed response. The document writers, as expected, are vociferously opposed to the plan while many others view this as a welcome step in the right direction. Although the department has issued a notification in this regard, G. Sudhakaran, minister for the registration department, has directed the department to keep the matter frozen as the government needed to take a policy level decision before going ahead with the change.
The decision to allow individuals register deeds would serve its objective of eliminating exploitation by document writers as well as ending corruption in sub-registrar offices only if the proper guidelines and draft documents are published to make the processes easier for the common people. Legal complexities and the nitty-gritty involved in framing documents, different structure of stamp fee and difficulties in taking printouts of large sized filing sheets are major practical hurdles involved, persons familiar with the system said.
“It is a matter of whether you are willing to go through the cumbersome process or pay the prescribed fee to the document writers and get things done with ease,” says Unnikrishnan M, a lawyer in Thiruvananthapuram. “If the government's intention is to make the procedures fair, then it must ensure that officials with integrity are posted at sub -registrar offices so that they would not put people into unnecessary hardships."
Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association of India (CREDAI) vice-president Mr. Raghuchandran Nair stressed the need for the government to publish model deeds and guidelines with clarity for the common man to understand them better. “Corrupt officials exploit the ignorance of the common man,” he said. “The decision to allow individuals to register own deeds and give models of deeds are obviously good steps toward this direction. Various guidelines for document preparation should be also published with clarity."
Document writers, however, feel that the move by the government would hit the livelihood of nearly 20,000 document writers in the state besides creating the environment for endless litigations connected with document registration. G. Prasannan, a document writer based in Kochi for the past five decades, says that the responsibility for corruption in the registration department should not be blamed on document writers.
“If officials responsible for ensuring a corruption-free governance system undertake their duties in an honest manner, the issue of corruption will be eliminated without any problem,” he said. According to Mr Prasannan, document writing is a “complex and technical process and people who wanted to have a hassle-free registration of deeds would prefer to take the services of document writers.” A document writer is responsible for ensuring an error-free deed, which is the most important document in the life of an individual.
“An error in the deed can be a major problem as making corrections in a document is a cumbersome and time-consuming process,” he added. Mr. Prasannan also expressed doubts about the efficiency of the model deeds prepared by the registration department for the purpose. “The one-size-fits-all approach will not work in deed writing as the antecedents of each property will be different,” he pointed out.
The decision to permit individuals to write their own deeds is a welcome step as it would help in bringing down the levels of corruption prevailing in connection with registration of documents, says P.R. Padmanabhan Nair, president of Residents’ Associations’ Coordination Council. There has been a widespread feeling that document writers are used as a conduit for perpetrating a corrupt system, Mr Nair, a lawyer, said. “The system of allowing individuals to prepare deeds can be an efficient only if the government prepares a slew of model deeds that could be easily understood by ordinary persons.”
(With inputs from Arjun Reghunath)
