Race against time to finish 20,000 flat registries in Noida

NOIDA: The Uttar Pradesh stamps and registration department will work on all the remaining days of this month, except for Holi on March 24, to register the maximum number of flats possible before the stamp duty hike comes into effect. The notification is expected to come out in the beginning of April.

Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate N P Singh said the decision has been taken to ease some burden on homebuyers before the state government issues a notification on the increased rate. But the task on hand is a mammoth one, with over 20,000 pending registries, of which, more than 16,000 flats are in the Okhla Bird Sanctuary (OBS) zone, where registries were not carried out for almost two years.

The UP cabinet had approved the 2% hike on March 7. "Thousands of registries are pending and soon stamp duty in the district is going to be hiked. To meet the deadline, we have directed stamp and registration department to work all days till March 31, except Holi," the DM said.

Officials said that the stamps department had worked on this weekend as well and the department has managed to complete 2,000 registries since the order was passed. Assistant inspector general of stamp and registration department S K Singh said that usually, 125 registries are completed on a day. "Following the district magistrate's direction, we have sped up the process of property registration and we are now registering 300 properties in a day," Singh said.

He, however, admitted the target is too big as thousand of registries are still pending. "There are over 16,000 registries of 26 developers, whose projects were hampered due to Okhla Bird Sanctuary row. Apart from these developers, there are other developers and individual registries are also pending. The total figure is over 20,000," he added.

Additional district magistrate (finance and revenue) Rajesh Yadav said the department has asked developers to provide infrastructure and manpower to execute the maximum registries. Supertech group's CMD RK Arora said the developers are ready to provide infrastructure and manpower. "We are ready to provide computers, internet and other facilities to meet the deadline," he said.

SOURCE: ETRealty.com