Plea in Madras HC challenges mandatory Online Registration of documents

The Madras High Court on Tuesday issued notice in a PIL challenging the mandatory online registration of documents in Tamil Nadu. The petition was filed in view of infrastructural deficiencies and ensuing practical difficulties, apart from privacy concerns..The plea filed by M Sinnaraj, agriculturalist and Secretary of the RTI Association at Coimbatore, points out,.“Online registration could become fully successful, only when the entire general public as well as all the Sub-Registrars and their staff working under them are fully become conversant and well-versed on the subject. More so, only when the State or its instrumentals create infrastructure like storing data in its server, the online registration is in great danger and risk in the hands of private organizations. Till such time, the insistence of only online registration, without keeping available alternative parallel remedy of manual registration, would create havoc and chaos among the public…..… when Tamil Nadu has not become E- state fully so far as Registration Department is concerned, compelling the public to do registration only online, will cause not only inconvenience but also it may develop a sense of hatred and aversion on the system itself in the minds of the public.”.Following preliminary arguments made by Advocate Richard Wilson for the petitioner, the Bench of Justices M Sathyanarayanan and N Seshasayee issued notice returnable by three weeks..The petitioner lists out a number of reasons why the insistence on online registration is currently problematic..Practical difficulties.The petitioner highlights that government officials themselves are not equipped to implement the system, as evident from recurring issuance of circulars on how to implement the system..Apart from a concern raised that these circulars appear to have no underlying legislative sanction, the petitioner points out,.“All these (circulars) go to show that the Registration Department is still not fully ready and conversant with the on- line procedure. Even as on date, a number of difficulties are experienced by the general public.”.The insistence on online registration alone is also detrimental to persons who are from remote or rural locations, the plea contends. The process may prove cumbersome and incomprehensible to uneducated registrants, it is pointed out. Owing to infrastructural deficiencies, the token system in place for availing online registration facilities also proves to be a practical inconvenience. As explained in the petition,.” … initially token shall be booked in the e-registration module, then document to be created by entering the abstract of the document and the same has to be presented for registration. The registration would be undertaken only at the booked time and date. Unfortunately, if either server is down or the server is slow, then indefinitely the person has to wait and if within given time registration could not be done, then he has to get another token for another date and time. .Due to this token system, as everything is done under the control of computer and no personal attention could be given by any staff in the sub-Registrar’s office even to an ailing or old person, things are moving so mechanically causing much hardships in particular cases.”.Privacy concerns.The petitioner points out that the entire registration system has been handed over to a private company, namely, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). It is noted that while the first version of the scheme, “STAR 1.0″, had the sub-registrar playing some role, all activities were fully entrusted to TCS later when the project was revised to become STAR 2.0..“...Even when a member of the public wants to have any information from any Sub-Registrar’s office, in turn the Sub-Registrar’s Office has to feed the queries of the public to Tata Consultancy Services, and wait for their reply. .The result is, instead of a Government Officer controlling a private company, the private company gives directions to the officers of the Government. To say in a nutshell, the Sub-Registrars, all over the State, are at the beck and call of the employees of TCS., some of whom may even be on contract basis. This is not a healthy and appreciable trend…”.In view of this, the petitioner argues that with online registration, the right to privacy is at stake..“The valuable documents of the public are maintained by a private server, wherein the privacy and secrecy of the documents is highly at risk. Apart from this, there is possibility of tampering of any document for the reason that all documents are under the control of a private establishment. When Government is not able to have its own infrastructure of having servers, it should not have ventured into this dangerous task….…right to privacy is completely given a go-by and storage of data in a private organisation like TCS is going to expose every property holder at risk. There will be no accountability if the records are tampered at the recipient level.”.While these concerns remain unaddressed, the petitioner has noted that there is no indication from the government that the public has an option to opt for manual registration of documents. In this backdrop, the petitioner has opined,.“… since online registration is yet to streamline by avoiding all the practical lacunae found in the system, till such time it is worthwhile that the option of manual registration is left open to the choice of the public.”.Therefore, the petitioner has now prayed before the High Court to issue a direction so that the state authorities permit both online and manual registration of documents, leaving it to the public to choose the mode of registration, until the State becomes an E-State..[Read the Petition]