Hyderabad: How much time should it take to register a rental agreement with the sub-registrar?
Thirty minutes; one hour; two hours or even more?
As I understand, looking at the Karnataka model, each assignment should not take more than thirty minutes.
But in ‘Bangaru (Golden) Telangana’ it is a torturous process.
This is not ‘service only’ work. It generates revenue for the government which runs into crores of rupees monthly.
Since it deals with the public and for generation of revenue it is said to be one of the most corrupt government institutions.
No paper moves without greasing the palm of the middleman as well as the officials. In most cases, it is the job of the middleman or agent to arrange the registration process after ‘satisfying’ the official process, mostly through unofficial means.
I spent over three hours yesterday (July 24, 2024) on the registration of a rental deed at the Sub-Registrar office located in Erragadda. We were a team of five people, three of them were above 70 years of age. The senior most in the group was a lady who was nearly 80 years old. The frail lady was there to sign some changes in the rental deed.
The Process
The first step was to get an agent to prepare the deed. The second was to wait for the agent to tell us when to go to the office for the task. He might take a few days. The third step is to go to the assigned sub-registrar’s office and wait for our turn while the agent runs around making the path easy through his ‘understanding’ with the officials there.
We were there by 1-30pm as per the instructions of the agent. He prepared the document and walked to the second floor of the Sub-Registrar office. After about half an hour he asked us to join him.
We went to the first-floor office which is located in one medium-sized hall. There, at the one end of the office sat two sub-registrars one a senior looking man and the other middle aged woman. They were busy signing the documents that were being presented to them by their assistants after vetting.
Here vetting could mean anything.
The hall is lined with two sets of offices—one on the right and the other behind sheets of glasses. There were less than a dozen officials. Some were looking at the blank computer screens and a few others manually processing the documents.
I became restless after two hours of watching a crowd of about 25 people in that small hall. In the meantime, the agent moved from one desk to the other, God knows doing what. My old and frail cousin began showing signs of fatigue. My cool and patience began replacing with frustration and anger.
At the end of 2 and a half hours, I lost my cool and shouted at the agent. I was also addressing the flock of quiet sheep-like people who believed that their turn would come soon.
My screams of frustration bore no effect. Some people in the crowd looked at me as if I had gone mad. But no one spoke to me.
We finished the final signing and gave thumb impressions to a man sitting mostly without any work in the middle of the hall.
I firmly believe that this is not my story alone. It is a serious public grievance. The public has begun to believe that if anyone protested some officials would create more hurdles in the work.
It is a simple task. The Sub-Registrar and his staff should be shifted to a bigger building. There the public should be provided with basic facilities such as proper seating arrangements, and provision for water and toilets.
Would the government take any action? Maybe not until the seething public anger bursts out in massive protests.
