Maharashtra Awaits Clarity on Registration Bill Reforms

Pune: The Maharashtra state registration department is awaiting clarity from the Centre on whether its detailed recommendations for the Draft Registration Bill, 2025, will be adopted.

The proposed legislation seeks to replace the colonial-era Registration Act of 1908, modernising the 117-year-old framework through mandatory digitisation and stricter compliance. While the Centre sought inputs from all states before finalising the bill, Maharashtra submitted its section-wise feedback early last year. The state's recommendations focus on enhancing transparency, ensuring citizen convenience, and protecting state-specific amendments already in practice.

One of the state's primary proposals concerns the window for document submission. While Section 20 of the draft bill retains the current four-month period for presenting documents, Maharashtra has proposed slashing this to two months. 'In an era of digital systems and instant processing, a shorter timeline is both practical and necessary to prevent delays,' senior registration officials told TOI.

A major point of contention lies in Section 64, which empowers an adjudicating authority — the Inspector General of Registration (IGR) — to cancel registrations. This power does not exist in the 1908 Act. Maharashtra has strongly opposed vesting this authority in an administrative body, arguing that property cancellation involves complex legal and financial disputes, including the exchange of consideration and the ripple effect on subsequent transactions. The state insists that the power to cancel registrations must remain with the courts.

Maharashtra is also advocating for harsher deterrents against registration fraud. While Section 73 of the draft bill prescribes up to three years of imprisonment for fraudulent transactions, the state has proposed enhancing the punishment to seven years and making the offense non-bailable.

The Registration Act is a central law, but many states have introduced local amendments over the decades to address specific regional needs. Maharashtra has officially requested that all such existing state-level amendments be protected and carried forward into the new law.

Beyond the legal framework, the state pitched for offline registration centres and digital literacy initiatives in remote areas to prevent exclusion due to digitisation. Data privacy safeguards, including strict norms on data encryption, regulated third-party data sharing, and compliance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, were also flagged.

Other recommendations included mandatory notices before deregistration, creation of an independent Registration Dispute Resolution Authority for time-bound grievance redressal, and stronger inter-departmental coordination to support Aadhaar-based verification and e-records. Officials said every section of the draft bill was examined to ensure that the final law delivered a framework that is secure, transparent, and puts the citizens first.