Another SARATHI in town, this one to stop bids to strike fraudulent land deals in state

Residents hail move of setting up the new Sarathi helpline, officials say it’s a stepping stone to ‘Right to Services Act’.

The call centre claims to have received nearly 1 lakh calls in three and a half months.(Source: IE photo by Pavan Khengre)

WHEN Omprakash Khanagwal, a resident of Nasirabad in Ajmer, Rajasthan, wanted to buy a piece of land in Lonavala, he asked his friend in Pune to check the authenticity of the deal. To his shock, the friend got to know that the land had already been sold off previously. The sellers had tried to trap Khanagwal in a fraudulent deal and he was saved by a whisker.

This is not a one-off case as complaints of such fraudulent deals are regularly lodged with the authorities.

What came to Khanagwal’s rescue is the new Sarathi helpline started by the Department of Registration and Stamps, along with the Citizen’s Charter.

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Officials said the project launched by the department headed by Inspector General Shrikar Pardeshi was the first of its kind in the country and meant to benefit anybody living in India and planning to buy land or property in Maharashtra. “It is the first stepping stone towards the Right to Services Act planned by the Devendra Fadnavis government,” said an official.

Pardeshi, during his previous posting as municipal commissioner, had launched Sarathi in Pimpri-Chinchwad and the project turned out to be a big success.

The Sarathi project — helpline number 8888007777 — launched by the Department of Registration and Stamps on August 15 is proving to be no different. In barely three-and-a-half months, as many as 1.35 lakh residents across Maharashtra have taken advantage of the plan. Every day, nearly 1,200 people across Maharashtra are taking recourse to the new initiative. The department has 500 sub-registrar offices where as many as 9,000 documents are registered every day.

Pardeshi said land agreements signed barely a minute ago were available online now. “Anybody who wishes to purchase a land can call up the helpline number and seek guidance. Whether a land has already been sold can be found out on our website. If you put the survey number in the e-search, you will immediately get the details of the piece of land that you wish to buy,” he said.

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Those who do not have access to Internet can call up the helpline number. According to officials, the call centre provides guidance as well as registers complaints of residents and operates on all days of the week from 7 am to 9 pm.

“This is a welcome step and will go a long way in curbing fraudulent land and property deals in Maharashtra,” said Rohidas Rithe, a resident of Bhopkhel who too was victim of a fraud land deal recently.

“SARATHI (Stamp And Registration Assistance Through Helpline Information) provides complete and standardised information about the department in an integrated manner. It covers information on organisational structure, document registration, stamp duty, valuation of property, e-services, e-payment, deemed conveyance and marriage registration,” said Pardeshi.

Citizen’s Charter, said Pardeshi, was an effort to help residents to know in detail about the 27 different services provided by seven different types of offices in the department. “It gives vital information about a service like documents required, prescribed fees, time taken to provide the service, officer responsible to provide the service, appellate authority etc. Residents can access SARATHI and Citizen’s Charter through FAQs, PDF book, mobile app and e-book using,” he said.

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Pointing out that they had laid stress on education, information and communication, Pardeshi said: “The effort is to educate residents about their right to get documents registered in 30 minutes or the same day or the number of days in which they can get certificates. If they don’t get these in stipulated time, they can complain to us through the helpline or through email.” He said SARATHI information had been provided in a simple language that anybody could easily understand.

Pardeshi said the main website of the department had been comprehensively upgraded to provide information about sample application forms, check lists for scrutiny of applications, ready drafts of a few important documents, user guides for e-services, list of banks and agencies for collection of stamp duty etc.

At the same time, he added, the website had been made more user-friendly with important Acts, Rules as well as forms and attachments required for various services available online.

“Besides, the residents are guided about each activity of the department in a comprehensive manner. The online services have been made citizen-friendly with detail user guide and FAQs for each of the service,” said Pardeshi.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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