State of UT estate office: Complete computerisation still has a long way to go

As a matter of fact,the UT Estate Office is one of the busiest departments of the UT Administration with maximum paper work pertaining to the residential and commercial properties in the city,thus involving huge public dealing on a daily basis.

Sources say that unlike the initial plan,the software which was made by the PEC is already in use,albeit only for the internal purposes and not for public utility to track their own files.

As per the plan,other than the option of applying for a building plan sanction online,one could also check the status of the case. Besides,the software was also to be used for seeing field inspection reports generated from different wings of the building branch.

As per the existing procedure,property owners or their architects have to submit their building plan for approval. After checking at different levels,it goes to the Plan Approval Committee. It has been seen that architects had to make repeated rounds to the Estate Office to know the status of their plans. The online system was to check delays and increase the accountability.

While many of the architects did try to seek sanction of building plans initially,in the absence of the entire network,they never got any replies online and the system failed before it could even kickstart.

When contacted,UT Estate Officer-cum-Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Shayin said,“One of the biggest hurdles in way of computerisation of the UT Estate Office was first to digitise all the records which includes thousands of files pertaining to each and every property in the city. After doing the spadework in the past few months,we have now finalised the tender for digitisation of records of the Estate office. Once that is done,the EO will be fully computerised and we will launch a new-look website which will enable residents to get the entire property details at the click of a mouse,” he added.

Interestingly,while the first proposal to computerise the Estate Office was mooted in 1994,it was only in 2003 that finally a private bank along with a software company were brought on board and an MoU was inked between the UT Estate Office and the bank to get the work done.

The initial project was for outsourcing of payment collection and the computerisation of records. Besides,more than 70,000 record files of the Estate Office were to be converted into electronic files and put online. The number of files has,however,risen by several thousands.

For the purpose,the ground floor of the Estate Office,was even utilised by the bank till about two years ago before they were asked to leave the premises. The work was left unfinished and by then the EO had already paid about Rs 30 lakh to the bank and the other company.