Assembly adopts seven Bills, including Karnataka Stamp Amendment Bill

Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda speaking in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
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The Legislative Assembly on Wednesday adopted seven Bills, including the Karnataka Stamp (Amendment) Bill that seeks to ensure end-to-end digitisation of documents related to any registration deeds, including sale deed.

Piloting the Bill, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said the Bill would make provision for acknowledging e-signature and provision for e-payment as part of digitisation.

Among other things, the Bill would seek to end the present method of manual stamping as it was not foolproof, the Minister said and noted that digital stamp would replace the manual stamp method. The final goal is to reach the biometric stage of registration, he explained.

The Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Bill that would clear the legal decks for issuing e-khata as a one-time measure for properties located in unauthorised layouts in villages was also adopted. The Bill seeks to bring these layouts under the property tax network of village panchayats.

The Registration (Karnataka Amendment) Bill, which seeks to make it mandatory to register the power of attorney that authorises the transfer of immovable property, The Karnataka Land Grabbing Prohibition (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to protect the government and public land by ensuring that Revenue officials do not shirk from their primary responsibility of protecting, and The Karnataka Land Revenue (Amendment) Bill were also adopted.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (Amendment) Bill that seeks to declare any street as a public street and ascertain the development of even private roads within the BBMP limits was also adopted. The Bill provides for shifting B-khata properties into A-khata through certain declarations.

The Universities of Agricultural Sciences (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to set up a new University of Agricultural Sciences in Mandya, and the Karnataka Village Offices Abolition (Amendment) Bill that seeks to substitute the reference of the provisions of IPC to respective provision in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, were also adopted.

I-T Dept. gives oral consent for accessing database for PAN authentication

The Income Tax Department has informally agreed to Karnataka’s request to grant access to its database for authentication of Permanent Account Number (PAN) when those seeking to register their property documents submit PAN as proof of identity under the digitised system.

Disclosing this in the Assembly, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said presently 46% of people seeking to register their properties were opting to submit the PAN card as proof while an equal number were furnishing Aadhaar cards while only 3% were furnishing passports.

Authentication of identity was a must to prevent any fraudulent registrations, he pointed out. While the written consent from the I-T Department was awaited, the State was in touch with the Ministry of External Affairs to seek access to its database for authentication with respect to passports, he said.