Come November, both buyer and seller will be sent an OTP to be used for property registration

Mysuru: Come November, one-time password (OTP)-based verification will be mandatory for all property registrations in the State. The initiative is aimed at preventing impersonation and other irregularities during property registration. The move also comes in the wake of the Kaveri software, which holds the property records database, being hacked.

The OTP system was introduced on a trial basis in Shivamogga around 10 days ago and the Revenue Department has decided to extend the system to Sub-Registrar Offices in all districts. The new system is expected to be operational across the State from the first week of November. The exact date, however, has not been communicated to the Sub-Registrars.   

Property fraud cases have been detected in Bengaluru, Mysuru and several districts in North Karnataka and all those cases have been handed over to Cyber Crime Wing of Karnataka Police. 

M. Vivek, Sub-Registrar of Mysore West, told Star of Mysore that frauds can be prevented and detected if all property transactions are linked with Aadhaar. 

“Aadhaar database is based on fingerprints and iris scan and as such, it is authentic and the database can be easily verified,” he added. Apart from OTP, uploading scanned copies of supporting documents of a property being registered will also be mandatory. These measures are expected to strengthen online system and prevent tampering of software. 

Under the system, both the buyer and seller will be sent an OTP to be used for property registration and related activities. When the system is introduced, the Department expects to send 25,000 to 30,000 SMSes per day as it registers around 10,000 properties on an average in Karnataka. 

While plugging such irregularities, measures such as compulsorily uploading documents related to a property will help prevent bogus registrations. Similarly, the OTP feature will ensure double verification and is expected to reduce the number of impersonation complaints, officials said.  

Fraudulent changes of property documents using Kaveri software was first flagged on Dec. 7, 2018. Since then, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) — which developed the software — has been strengthening the back-end of the software, officials said.