THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Following the decision to link details of land holders with their respective Aadhaar numbers, the government is also likely to take a favourable decision on the proposal by the registration department to make it mandatory to submit Aadhaar number of buyers and sellers of properties during property registrations.
A proposal in this regard from IG, registrations, on the basis of recommendations from the Centre, (accessed by TOI) is pending before the government for more than a year now. The department of land resources under the ministry of rural development of the Centre, had written to the states in 2017, that Aadhaar authentication should be made mandatory for registration of properties for identification and prevention of benami property transactions.
As per directions from the Centre, every sub-registrar office should have provisions for readily enrolling citizens and provide them with Aadhaar number if they do not have one. Once the proposal comes into force, an applicant executing the registration of a deed will be required to provide the Aadhaar number along with other details. According to registration department sources, once approved by the government, all the registration under an Aadhaar number can be easily tracked from any office. Also, since the process of integration of the registration department with the revenue department is underway, the Aadhaar details will be readily available in the village records once the property registration is completed. Even before the Centre asked the states to use Aadhaar for property registration, the state revenue department had in 2012 come up with the idea of unique thandaper number (UTN), a unique 10-digit alphanumeric number. The first two digits would be alphabets that would capture the details like district, taluk and village and the remaining eight digits would be the unique thandaper assigned to each land holder in the state. However, the UDF government did not proceed with the idea. “Now that a policy decision has been taken, the government is likely to give clearance for the proposal of the registrations department as well. This decision to link land details with Aadhaar is the best in terms of implementing the Kerala Land Reforms Act in its true letter and spirit,” a senior government officials said. At present, individuals are allowed to hold a maximum of 7.5 acres and families a maximum of 15 acres. Since there is no single number linking all transactions, it is impossible to know how much land an individual or a family is holding in various parts of the state. Once Aadhaar is linked, the land held under a single Aadhaar number can easily be detected.
February 18, 2020
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