A tech fix for property woes

The Supreme Court's recent observations on the lack of reliability, transparency and efficiency in the purchase and sale of immovable property, and the need for a technological transformation of the process are timely.

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Ruling on a case from Bihar, where the owner could not sell his property due to rules issued without proper legal foundation, the court pointed out that antiquated colonial laws—the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, and the Registration Act, 1908— governing the sector strangely maintained a dichotomy between the ownership and registration, resulting in mere presumptive holding of the title to property. This cast a heavy burden on the potential buyer to carry out an extensive search, spread over three decades, to ascertain marketable title. Hapless buyers have to use a variety of sources, including brokers, to get paper records and prepare the transaction for registration at great expense, In the court's view, the answer to this vexed question lies in blockchain technology. Although it is not a