The Mamata Banerjee government has decided to launch a slot-booking system for property registration to reduce the harassment of people in around 300 offices across Bengal.

“The online slot-booking system is likely to be launched in August. As soon as the system is ready, people will not have to wait hours in the queue. They can book a slot from their home and visit the office at a particular time to get their work done,” said a senior official in the registration and stamp revenue department.

A source said the decision to introduce an online slot-booking-based system for property registration was taken after it was observed that several people faced harassment because of long queues. It is also unknown how many buyers would approach a particular office on a particular day for their property registration.

“It has been found that in a particular registration office where around 40 registrations are done on average, suddenly around 100 people approached to get their property registration done. In those cases, those who came late failed to get their work done and had to visit another day. If the online slot-booking system is operational, such problems will be resolved,” said the source.

Currently, the state has around 300 district sub-registrar and additional district sub-registrar offices across Bengal, and on average, around 10,000 property registrations are done a day.

The Bengal government earns a revenue of around ₹6,500 crore a year from
property registrations, which include sale deeds, gift deeds, lease deeds and
mortgages.

Currently, a particular buyer has to pay the registration fee online and deposit their registration deeds in the first half.

After the verification is done, it is sent for digital signature and other formalities to finalise the registration process.

In the case of the new online slot booking system, the particular buyer has to visit the registration department website where he or she has to first choose the area and the particular sub-registrar office for property registration. Then, the buyer has to choose a date and a slot for registration according to availability.

Once it is done, they have to visit the office at that particular time to get the registration done.

“We have a plan to keep an option to submit the draft of the deed through the online portal. If the deed is checked previously, it would take only a few minutes to complete the property registration process,” said a finance department official.

He said that primarily, the department would keep half of the total registration time for those who would book an online slot, besides the current registration process.

“As there will be many people unable to book a slot online, we will keep the current registration process active. The online slot-booking system would mainly help young buyers, especially in Calcutta and urban areas who are busy with their hectic job schedules,” he added.

Bimalashish Bhattacharjee, a Santiniketan-based promoter, said the online slot-booking system would help both sellers and buyers.

“Sometimes, we had to wait for a day to get our work done. If the government comes up with such an online slot booking system, it would help both buyers and sellers,” he said.