Title deed writing will become a thing of past

KOZHIKODE: In the last 30 years of his life, he has written with ink more than 6,000 documents with his official initials D A D 86. And within a year, he will have to bid farewell to his pen. M K Anilkumar is the person who would lose his job of title deed writer, as the government is planning to make the process of registration of title deeds online. Along with him, another 50,000 document preparers and scribes will have to part with their pen, with the launching of the online system. “It is more than a century-old profession, which has got the highest legal sanctity for the protection of the  right to property,” says Anilkumar. “I say this because the validity of any electronically-generated evidence in front of the judiciary is questioned while a written evidence is the most valid in the court,” he adds. The question majority of the employees raise is that, why should a foolproof system be dismantled for a system which can be easily corrupted.“There are 309 Sub Registrar Offices in Kerala where almost 3,000 to 4,000 deeds are registered a day. There is a huge number of people who work in this field,” he added. The income a document writer would get from a single document ranges between Rs 400 to Rs 7,500.Kerala Government, as a part of the Modernising Government Programme (MGP), is working for achieving the ‘people-centric service delivery policy’ which is included in the 15 year-long programmes of MGP. The government has already started the process of issuing marriage certificates and encumbrance certificates online. Minister for Registration T M Jacob has announced that the next target of the department is to issue the Registration of Title Deed (Aadharam) and the Transfer of Registry (Pokkuvarvu) documents through the computerised system, which would be the day the title deed writers will have to put down their pen.“For a person to get the licence as a document writer, he has to pass two tests. One is the calligraphy test, which would ensure that one can write legibly. I still remember the test I took 30 years ago and from then on I have been writing. It seems that my time as a writer is over,” says Anilkumar.