Transforming Property Registration

The Government of India has released the draft Registration Bill, 2025, to modernise the registration of property documents in India. The draft Bill is built around five key pillars: enabling online registration, broadening the scope of compulsory registration, enhancing legal and procedural robustness, introducing institutional and governance reforms, and ensuring processes are accessible and citizen-friendly.

- SHIVANAND PANDIT

It seeks to promote the use of plain language in drafting deeds, leverage digital tools, and establish transparent procedures, making the registration process more inclusive, particularly for individual citizens and small enterprises. The overall emphasis is on simplification, without undermining legal clarity or procedural safeguards.

On May 27, 2025, the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, issued the draft Registration Bill, 2025, to digitise the property registration system across the country. Once enacted, the Bill will repeal and supersede the century-old Registration Act of 1908, a pre-Constitution law that currently regulates the registration process in India. The Bill is open for public feedback until June 25, 2025. Suggestions can be submitted in MS Word or PDF format, preferably with section-wise comments or proposed amendments.

The Registration Act of 1908 was designed at a time when all records were maintained in physical, printed form. Consequently, it requires property documents to be registered manually and follows timelines suited to paper-based processing. However, in recent decades, the widespread adoption of digital technologies has transformed the way essential records are stored and managed. Despite this shift, the current legal framework has not evolved to keep pace with these advancements. To bridge this gap, the proposed Bill introduces a fully online, paperless, and citizen-friendly registration system. Its primary aim is to simplify and accelerate the registration process, enhancing accessibility and convenience for the public. By aligning land registration procedures with modern digital technologies and e-governance principles, the Bill seeks to bring the system up to date with today’s technological landscape.