Thousands of property transfer files missing

Board of Revenue orders audit of registry branches

LAHORE:

The senior member of the Punjab Board of Revenue has ordered a special audit for the recovery of millions of rupees in property transfer fees lost due to corruption in the registry branches across the province.

The board had set up the registry branches at the district and tehsil levels under the supervision of the deputy commissioners for collecting various taxes related to the transfer of property ownership for the Punjab government, municipal corporation the FBR and other authorities.

According to sources, it is suspected that revenue employees posted in the branches had declared lower values than the DC rates and the actual worth of the land, due to which the government exchequer had been deprived of substantial amounts in the fees.

The board of revenue annually audits the property transfer registry branches in all the tehsils across the Punjab to ensure the achievement of targets and transparency.

According to a report of the board, registration of transfer of properties was done in the registry branches in the nine divisions of Punjab but record of taxes levied was missing, due to which fraud could not be detected.

Senior Member of Punjab Board of Revenue Nabil Javed ordered audit officers to check the records, leading to the disclosure that the record of 55,500 registries from across the province was missing.

During the initial audit by the board, as many as 25,441 entries in the record were traced, while the record of 30,060 registries is still missing.

As per preliminary information, the loss to the government treasury has been estimated at around Rs203 million.

The sources said the highest number of registries under scrutiny was in the Faisalabad division, where the record of 37,857 registries had bene missing in Faisalabad district and two in Toba Tek Singh. Of the registries, the record of 13,614 has been traced, while that of 24,243 transactions is yet to be found.

In Multan division, the record of 10,673 registries had disappeared, of which about 7,000 have been traced and 3,685 are yet to be found.

The Sahiwal division had the lowest number of missing files at four, while Lahore had 1,610, including 353 registries that are still missing. In Gujranwala division, 81 of the 1,979 missing files are yet to be traced.

A search for 472 missing registry entries out of the initial 643 in Rawalpindi division is under way. Similarly, the record of 549 out of 1,257 property transfer files is being searched for in Sargodha, while out of 875 files, 639 are missing in Bahawalpur and 34 out of 599 in Dera Ghazi Khan division.

An official said the estimated loss to the national exchequer might rise as a result of further investigations.

Punjab Board of Revenue Tax Member Tariq Qureshi said the whole facts would come to light after further investigations.

He said all the districts were given a target of tax collection. The tax target was proportionately assigned every year to the registry branches. An audit was conducted after noticing a revenue shortfall, which had revealed the unavailability of record.

The matter was brought to the notice of Senior Member Nabeel Javed who ordered a special audit.

The investigation process has started in the Faisalabad and Multan divisions, where the highest number of property transfer record files had been found missing.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 7^th, 2023.