Sunday, November 4, 2012

Getting married? Register later, there’s no other way

Registration of property and marriages has come to a grinding halt across the state as about 700 data-entry operators working at sub-registrars’ offices have gone on an indefinite strike.
Not only is the government losing about Rs30 crore every day because of the strike, people too are suffering as they have no option but to wait. Of the 220 sub-registrar offices in the state, 42 are in Bangalore. Data-entry operators have gone on strike to press for their demand of better pay and job security; they staged a demonstration at Freedom Park on Tuesday.
Anita Badiger, sub-registrar, Ulsoor, said no registration took place at their office on Monday. She said just one property was registered and one marriage certificate was issued on Tuesday.
As Bangalore has emerged as a favoured destination for property investment in the country—attracting even non-resident Indians—the investors who came to the city solely to get their property registered are left high and dry. Some of them are going back to their base while some are choosing to stay in the city and wait for the strike to be called off.
The strike has hit hard the NRIs in particular as they will have to plan another trip to the country only to get their property registered.
The task, which, ideally, should have got over in one day will end up taking a lot of time because of the strike.
R Nagaraja Reddy, president-elect of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India, Karnataka, said buyers who are based outside the state are suffering the most because of the strike. He noted that while the strike might not affect builders, the buyers were at its receiving end. He said the government should take steps to ensure that the strike got over soon.
An officer working with sub-registrar’s office in Chamarajpet said 40 people had came to the office on Monday for registering property/marriages, but had to go back empty-handed.
Miffed at false media report
R Roopa, a homemaker, was among those who visited sub-registrar’s office in Chamarajpet, but in vain. She said she read in a newspaper that although data-entry operators were boycotting work, the sub-registrars would handle the computer to register property. She said she found that this was not true when she visited the office. She was sent back with an assurance that the registration would be done as soon as the data-entry operators resume duty. Roopa said the media should not give wrong information to the public that registration was going on despite the strike.
Ramakrishna, a businessman, said he visited sub-registrar’s office on Monday as well as Tuesday, but to no avail. He said he doubted that the strike would end soon. When DNA visited the sub-registrar’s office at Gandhinagar, it was empty. The sub-registrar, TV Jayashankar, said there would be delay in issuing marriage certificate and registering property documents because of the strike.
The grievance
The data-entry operators’ grouse is that they are being paid only Rs2,000-Rs3,150 a month by the outsourcing companies. Chandrasekhar S Hiremath, president of Shramajeevigala Vedike, said the state government prides itself on being a model employer, but was least bothered about improving their living conditions.
On an average, sub-registrar’s offices in the state register properties worth Rs30 crore—and 6,000-odd documents (property and marriages)—a day. One has to pay Rs5,600 as stamp duty and Rs1,000 to the government for registering a property to the tune of Rs1 lakh. For a Hindu marriage, one has to pay Rs145 and for an inter-caste marriage, one has to pay Rs115.
Dayashankar, personal secretary of chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda, contacted the agitating data-entry operators to know about their demands.
The operators told him they wanted a monthly pay of Rs12,000 and job security.
Sloppy workEven as the data-entry operators are demanding a better deal from the government, there are those who say that the operators need to pull up their socks as they are error-prone.
Kumar, a resident of Chamarajpet, said just two-three operators are deputed at a sub-registrar’s office and they have the entire burden of dealing with a deluge of documents.
He said the operators often commit crucial mistakes while feeding the data and to rectify these mistakes in the property documents, people have to spend about Rs2,000 by filling various forms. He said the government should hire more data-entry operators to solve this problem.

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