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KARACHI, Aug 6: The Registrar Office makes people to pay taxes amounting to billions of rupees annually, but has nothing to offer to visiting tax-payers, not even a proper chair to sit on.
The department works under the Board of Revenue, Government of Sindh, and handles matters pertaining to transfer of real estate. It keeps track of all property transactions taking place in its jurisdiction and, according an official of the department, it has a record dating back to 200 years.
The district registrar heads the Karachi Division, where there are 24 offices of sub-registrars. Four of the 18 towns of Karachi -- Gulshan, Saddar, Jamshed and Clifton Cantonment -- have two sub-registrar offices each while the remaining 15 have one each.
The 24th registrar sits at the central office where district registrar, who maintains the estate transaction record, also has his office. Ironically, the District Registrar, A. Baqi Mehar, does not have a full list of the offices of sub-registrars and would have a brainstorm while calculating the number of the offices.
Keeping a low profile, the department once happened to be in the headlines when six persons, most of them government servants, were gunned down by unknown assailants at its Liaquatabad Supermarket office in 1995.
MICROFILMING UNITS: After getting through the registration process, a property document is sent to the Microfilming Unit where it is microfilmed at a cost of Rs5 per page.
The two microfilming units are housed in the office of the district registrar. Once microfilmed, the original document is returned to the concerned property owner.
Normally, the entire procedure takes one-two months while in urgent cases, it takes much lesser time for which a fee of Rs400 is charged.
In 1999, a second unit of microfilming section was set up at the office of the district registrar. Prior to the switching over to microfilming, the property documents used to be preserved by way of pasting.
The delivery of documents is supposed to be made within seven days from the date of their presentation from the office of the sub-registrar concerned.
TIME FACTOR (DELAYS): Lawyers play an important role at the sub-registrar offices by offering solutions to all problems on ‘extra’ payment. “The one who is not willing to pay extra is told that the registrar is faced with a backlog and he may be given a date as farther as six months,” people frequenting the offices said while explaining the role of these lawyers.
“Often, after listening to their arguments, a client would agree to pay extra and a handsome share is also passed on to official concerned,” alleged Hasan Ali, who has regularly been visiting the office of the sub-registrar, Clifton, for quite some time to get his property transactions registered.
However, the district registrar contends that delays are caused only when the microfilming unit runs out of the required material.
All original documents submitted at any of the 23 sub-registrar offices are sent to the main office for the purpose of microfilming. However, these documents of immense value, especially for their owner, are transported to the main office (district registrar office) by an employee of clerk level who would travel by bus, rickshaw or such other means.
“God forbids, if the employee meets an accident, these important documents would be lost and obtaining a duplicate would require a superhuman effort,” feared a senior officer in the department.
He pointed out that some parties would prefer to make part-payment in the presence of the registrar in a property transaction and in such a situation, life of everyone around would be at stake. He suggested that there should be proper security arrangements in this regard.
An official requesting anonymity said that the department would collect huge sums of money in taxes from property owners but lacked the courtesy of even offering a seat to any of them visiting the offices. “Almost all the offices, including the main office, are in state of despair with broken furniture and fixtures,” the official pointed out.
The district registrar was quick to add that the shortage of staff was the other major problem.
On an average, some 100,000 registries under the head of power of attorney, sale deed, lease deed and mortgage deed, are made annually in the city, making the receivables to the district registrar to come to around Rs5 billion a year.
EVASION: Initially, the property document would have the actual amount involved in the transaction entered in some column, but with the unimaginable increase in property value, and indeed the tax rates, sellers and buyers resorted to showing a lesser amount of transaction, according to some officials. Subsequently, they added, the government issued an evaluation table for different parts of the city to determine a logical value at a minimum level.
However, still the parties involved manage to get approved the figures of their choice.
HISTORY: The history of the Registration Establishment dates back to 200 years. Headed by an Inspector General of Registration, based in Hyderabad, Sindh, the establishment falls under the purview of the Board of Revenue.
According to District Registrar A. Baqi Mehar, the institution is in possession of the record in Arabic, Persian and Gujrati. However, he added, this valuable record was no more with the department (registrar office) as the same had been taken away by the Department of Archaeology for proper upkeep.
