LAHORE: The government has empowered sub-registrars to register the entire sale/purchase of properties in all private housing schemes (cooperative etc) and those under control of development authorities through an e-registry portal.

The government has also allocated housing schemes to sub-registrars and defined their areas within revenue limits of Lahore and other districts. Under this decision, the transfer of land in all housing schemes would now be carried out through online e-registry.

This was decided in a meetingpresided over by Senior Member Board of Revenue Punjab Nabeel Javed. The meeting was attended by BoR Member Taxes Zaman Wattoo, Member Colonies Abdul Waheed Malik, Secretary Hafiz Ahmad Tariq, Punjab Land Records AuthorityDirectorGeneralIkramul Haq and LDA Director General Tahir Farooq.

`The registration of housing schemes with the PLRA will safeguard the property rights of the public and increase their trust in the digital system,` said Mr Nabeel Javed while speaking on the occasion. He mentioned that the registration of private housing schemes with PLRA would occur only afterapproval from the regulators. To ensure the transparency, security and effectiveness of the online property transfer system, data security would be the top priority.

With registration of housing schemes with the PLRA, all relevant data would be accessible for the public online.

The digitisation will also make the digital map of governmentapproved societies available on the website. He warned that the schemes whose data would not available online would be considered illegal.

`Citizens can verify the legal status of housing societies through the web portal themselves too,` he said.