The state government is taking yet another step towards simplifying the process to secure deemed conveyance, by addressing procedural anomalies and removing unnecessary obstacles.
It has decided that housing societies applying to get their name on the property card will no longer be required to produce records of all previous transactions with respect to the land. Henceforth, it will suffice for them to show the records for only the last transaction.
“Securing deemed conveyance is a herculean process. So, we have decided to simplify this complex and time-consuming procedure,” Balasaheb Thorat, revenue minister, said. “Now, when applying to get the name of the housing society on the property card, the society will not be required to produce all the past transactions records. As per a new government resolution that will be issued in the next fortnight, they will have to produce the record of only the latest transaction.” he said.
The minister pointed out that while the government had issued the deemed conveyance circular to help housing societies, there were many problems in its implementation.
According to the procedure, the application for deemed conveyance passes through four departments. These are the district deputy registrar, stamp duty office, registration and city survey department and the land records department. Each department conducts aseparate hearing with the developer, landowner and occupants of the building society.
“Societies were asked to even pay stamp duty on the value of the land, existing fungible and future floor space index. This amount could go up to several lakhs of rupees. And yet they were not certain that they would get the conveyance,” said Ramesh Prabhu, chairman, Maharashtra Societies Welfare Association (MSWA). This tedious procedure and high costs discouraged many societies and flat owners from applying for deemed conveyance.
Now, Prabhu said, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had ordered officials of all four departments concerned with the deemed conveyance process to sit together in the first 10 days of each month and complete the process by the end of the month. “If thishappens, many societies will get deemed conveyance by next year,” he said.
There are about 60,000 housing societies across the state (25,000 of them in Mumbai) that are struggling to get their conveyance and the processing of their applications has been delayed for various technical reasons.
A month ago, the government had done away with the requirement of a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the developer for redeveloping the building or reselling flats. Developers were charging huge sums to give an NOC.