KARACHI: To protect rightful owners from bureaucratic hurdles and eliminate manipulation in the entries, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday directed the Board of Revenue (BoR) to rewrite the Record of Rights digitally and clear all suspicious entries of the properties marked in red by following a transparent process.

Over 496,000 flagged entries have been identified causing undue distress to the genuine property owners, leading to increased litigation due to technical snags and hurdles by the revenue officials.

Informed sources said that most of the flagged entries belonged to Karachi and they were marked suspicious by the revenue officials allegedly to mint money from the genuine owners.

They said that at the present Record of Rights of clear properties was being digitalised while the records of the entries marked in red would be digitalised after they were cleared by a process.

CM wants Sindh Land Revenue Act amended to simplify procedure for legitimate owners

“I don’t want legitimate property owners to be at the mercy of tapedars, mukhtiakras and sub-registrars,” the chief minister told a meeting of the BoR he had chaired held at the CM House, also attended by Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah and Senior Member BoR Baqaullah Unar.

The chief minister also directed the chief secretary to suggest the amendment to the Sindh Land Revenue Act to simplify the procedure.

Insiders in the revenue department said that the recent transfers of deputy commissioners in the city was also due to their failure to rectify the Record of Rights by addressing the pending appeals.

According to a statement issued from the CM House, the chief minister instructed the BoR to streamline the procedure, create a model digital form, secure his approval and initiate the digitisation of the records in two designated dehs in the province. “This will ensure that rightful owners receive their legal rights.”

The CM asked the BoR to provide him with the names of two dehs, one from Karachi and one from a rural area, to serve as model dehs for rewriting the Record of Rights.

He was informed that the BoR had decided to block 946,000 entries in the Record of Rights back in 2019. In response, he emphasised that the Record of Rights was a legal document, and there was no legal basis for marking any entry as suspicious without first hearing from the affected parties.

Mr Shah pointed out that identifying approximately 500,000 entries with a red mark had caused emotional distress for genuine owners and had led to increased litigation.

Regarding the rewriting of the record, the CM was informed that the province’s Record of Rights was revised or rewritten every 30 years.

Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah noted that the last revision was made in 1985, whereas Punjab revises its records every four years and Karnataka and Maharashtra in India revise theirs every 10 years.

CM Shah stressed that the goal of updating the record was to secure ownership titles, ensure transparency, integrate with e-registration and provide online services.

As for digitising the Record of Rights, the chief minister indicated that the focus should be on V.F. VII-A (Village Form) for agricultural land and V.F. II for non-agricultural land, reflecting the latest ownership entries across 6,090 dehs.

The CM was informed that the board had conducted separate meetings with two companies regarding the digitalisation process. Each company proposed a timeline that required four months to develop the software and an additional four to five months for pilot implementation.

The CM also tasked the chief secretary with assigning the responsibility of rewriting the Record of Rights to the IT company established by the provincial government. “This will be their first assignment,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2024