- Bribe Fighter
- 6 years ago
- 7685 views
Exhausted but Accomplished
Hi everyone....
My husband and I had gone to the Malur Sub Registrar office for the registration of our property. We were asked to pay Rs. 32000 in "cash" for which we won't get receipts. Sounded fishy hence we inquired more. They said it is facilitation / processing fees for people who are "helping" move the papers. Apparently that is the usual "arrangement" between the sub-registrar office and the builders and this is the "going rate" for our kind of property.
We decided NOT to pay the nicely clad "bribe" and informed the builder that we are putting our foot down. The builders tried to convince us with various arguments - "These are legal charges that we did not add in your sale consideration, you pay cash we will give receipt, you pay cash we will reimburse etc."
We did not budge. Suddenly, change in scenario. The people who had come from the builders' side to help us with registration washed their hands off the process and vanished, not even ready to tell us what the process is for us to take it up on our own.
Thankfully, we knew the local language and hence started from the scratch. Went inside found out what the process is and it took us looooooot of running around to just get the right forms and fill them up. Finally when we reached the Sub registrar with all the documents, he asked us for all kind of vague documents like - TDS paid receipts etc. in spite of us submitting the TRACES which show clearly the builder has paid TDS on our behalf for the property. While our paying taxes or not doesn't even fall under the purview of Sub Registrar, to register the property. It comes under Central Govt.
Funniest part is that the Khata for the property was not even approved and updated on the Kaveri Online site by the Panchayat office. I wonder how the builders were able to do registration of other properties in the same community without an approved khata. Apparently, if you go through the "normal" process, all these things would have been overlooked and the whole process would have taken just 15 minutes. We had to go to the panchayat office and requested for the approved Khata etc.
Long story short, ultimately after spending the whole day in the Sub registrar office we were turned back for various silly reasons. We did not lose hope. It is not a rocket science to get the requisite documents together. We did all that over the next couple of days and finally got the registration done "our" way - the "RIGHT" way.
Few observations that will be helpful for people like us who want to stand up against Bribe:
1. There is no single website where the list of "Required" documents for a home registration is available. Please go prepared with ALL possible documents
2. There is a "Sakala" helpline available for very many Karnataka State Govt. related items for which you get a guaranteed time-bound service from the Govt. officials. Please do talk to them and clarify your doubts before starting any process with any Govt.. office. http://www.sakala.kar.nic.in/
3. If you don't know the local language, please make sure you get someone along with you who can talk the local language. Else, it is quite difficult
4. Don't give up. It might just take longer but it is possible to do it the right way
This blog will be incomplete if I did not convey my heartfelt gratitude to Srikanth Vishwanathan, CEO of Janaagraha and Bhupati Shukla who is also a Bribefighter without whose support and guidance, we would not have been able to pull this off .
Finally, though we may have upset a whole bunch of people in the process of standing our stand, we are ok not to have a cup of tea with those so called well-wishers if we are able to stick to Integrity. We feel thoroughly exhausted but never have felt so accomplished!!! This is a small way of teaching our children the "Right values" by "Walking the talk" and not just preach. So, Good luck to ALL THE BRIBE FIGHTERS.