MROs can’t handle registrations, says staff CM’s MRO plan hit staff’s wall

The revenue department is opposing the state government’s plan to hand over property registrations to mandal revenue officers (MRO) from March this year.

Registrations are done by sub-registrars at present, and they come under the jurisdiction of the stamps and registration department.

At the collectors’ conference held last week at Pragati Bhavan, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that the government plans to make MROs the issuing authority.

The revenue department is averse to this proposal, saying that MROs are ill-equipped to handle the job and are already over-burdened with existing duties.

The revenue department argues that barring a few urban mandals, registrations in others are meagre and setting up registration infrastructure in all MRO offices would be a waste of money.

TS has 584 mandals at present, while the registrations department has only 141 sub-registrar offices in the state.

These 141 sub-registrar offices will continue to service their respective mandals, but the government will have to set up registration facilities in the remaining 443 mandals. On an average, there are 2,500 to 4,000 property registrations per day in TS. Sixty per cent of these are in urban areas and 40 per cent in rural areas.

According to revenue department officials, the staff in MRO offices and the MROs themselves will have to be trained for the new job. There is an existing shortage of staff in MROs so additional staff will have to be recruited — at least six persons in each MRO office. This has huge financial implications in the form of salaries.

Besides, none of the MRO offices has technical support to make online registrations. An amount of `15 lakh will be needed to put the system in place in each MRO office — a total of around `50 crore, with another `5 crore to be factored in every year for maintenance.

According to the revenue department staff, in 367 mandals, the average number of registrations is just three or less per day, and of these, 128 mandals see just one registration per day. To invest in so much on the infrastructure for so little gain is non-advisable.

MROs are required to go on field visits frequently and they will thus not be in the office for three days out of six.