More than 11 days after the state government instructed deputy collectors to upload the property sale deeds under reassessment online in order to enable property owners to know the status of the same, the authorities are yet to do so.
The new system module, through which the documents can be uploaded online, was made available to the deputy collectors’ offices on June 8.
Despite this, they have not yet complied with this order, keeping most property owners in the dark about the status of their documents.
When a property sales deed, registered or unregistered, is under review for stamp duty valuation — either due to undervaluation or overvaluation than the prevailing jantri (government-calculated rates for land and property), or due to queries related to inheritance or discrepancy between survey number and jantri rates — the sub registrar’s office withholds the document temporarily and sends it to the deputy collector’s office for reassessment of stamp duty.
In a circular dated June 9, the deputy superintendent of stamps asked the deputy collectors to ensure that the sale deeds under reassessment process are uploaded online from June 9 according to the provisions of Gujarat Stamp Act 1958.
The circular states that in the IRCMS portal, the new module for this process has been developed and made available starting June 8.
Sources said that since there is no time frame to clear the documents under reassessment, property owners end up going to the collector’s office in person to know the status of their papers.
It is to prevent this inconvenience that the order was issued to upload the same online. Some of the property owners who are able to pull the strings in the collector’s office get the documents cleared faster, said sources.
The government had issued the circular to make the process transparent, but neither the two stamp duty reassessment offices nor the 14 sub registrar’s offices in Ahmedabad have started uploading the sale deeds under reassessment yet.
Due to this lethargy, property owners still visit collectors’ offices to know the status of their documents. Besides, the government does not get the exact data of income generated through stamp duties, sources said.