Tenant Verification/Registration

Date: 20-07-2014                                                                             By email and post

To,

Hon’ble Home Minister,

Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt of India

North Block, New Delhi 110001
Email: jscpg-mha@nic.in

Hon’ble Sir,

Subject: Tenant Registration/Verification by Police –Problems and Suggestions

I thank BJP Govt for taking series of steps to make life of common Indians easy when dealing with Govt. I have been witness to real good governance in Gujarat in last one decade.

At present Police Commissioners of various cities in the country issue notifications making it mandatory for landlords to register tenant for verification. These notifications are for short period of 60 days or so. Law abiding citizens face undernoted problems for compliance:

Problems:

1. Notifications are not published on websites of Police Commissioners or State Home Depts. Even short notices are not put in public domain/print media etc nor press note is issued to make citizens aware of notifications. Hence, even educated landlords are not aware of such notifications.

2. Police Commissioners would be perhaps exhibiting notifications on notice boards of their offices/other police stations, which hardly law abiding common men/women dare to visit routinely. Thus there is no effective communication of notifications to those, whom it is applicable for compliance.

3. When landlord is caught by police for non-registration, then only landlord comes to know of such notification, which may be in force at that point in time. This situation is then exploited by police or middlemen.

4. Thus even if a law abiding landlord wants to comply with notification, he is not in a position to do so, due to communication gap from Police to landlords.

5. Retail Corruption may be rampant in this matter at ground level.

6. Notifications are issued in State language and hence landlords not knowing local language fail to understand its contents.

7. At present notifications are issued for area covered by police commissioners of respective cities. Anti-national elements would be residing in nearby villages and towns and frequenting to the cities for which notifications are issued. Thus such notifications become ineffective, while causing hardships to law abiding landlords, generating ill-feeling towards govt and the ruling party. I doubt if such registration would have helped Govt and Police to contain anti-national activities.

8. Few days back, I read in news paper that a poor woman  with cut off legs had to climb 7^th or 9^th floor of the court building, since she was arrested for renting her house without police registration of tenant.

Suggestions:

I have following suggestions to ease out the problem facing common men:

A] A single notification for entire State [mentioning names of cities] should be issued by Home Department of States or State DGPs, whenever necessary, so that landlords are not required to search for individual cities in the State.

B] Notifications should be placed on websites of home departments of the States or of DGPs offices, with format and procedure for registration.

C] A gist of notifications should be published in two leading news papers of the State in Hindi, English and State language giving link of website for details.

D] Press notes may be issued by Home Departments or DGP offices, so that newspapers can carry news for public information.

E] Notifications should be trilingual – State language, Hindi and English

F] There should be online facility to register tenants relating to State as a whole. At present it is city-wise e.g. Ahmedabad, Pune, Indore etc. From address of property, information can be transmitted by the system to respective City Police Commissioners for necessary action. Online facility should generate printable/downloadable acknowledgements for record of landlords.

G] Social media like face book, twitter etc should be used by home departments of States or police departments to communicate issuance of notifications.

H] Tenants or landlords should not be called to police station but police personnel should visit the rented place for on-the-spot verification.

I] Landlords or tenants should be permitted to use recording devices during visit of police for enquiry.

J] For first instance of non-compliance landlord should be made to comply in a week time and warned, rather than taking punitive action against him. He may not be involved in deliberate defiance of notification, but out of lack of knowledge of such notification being in force.

K] SMSes /emails should be used to communicate to landlords [who have registered with police department as part of e-governance], of issuance of such notifications, if feasible.

L] If possible police should have small notice boards for its public related notifications at places which are frequented by public [like post offices, banks, libraries, some govt offices]. Police/Home department may send such notifications by post to head of such offices for exhibition on police notice boards placed in such offices.

M] It should not be mandatory to get NOC from police department, before renting, since NOC would be inordinately delayed and landlord will rent out without NOC. Just uploading or submitting prescribed details 15 days prior to renting may be sufficient.

I am sure your Ministry will cogitate on my suggestions which are conveyed as part of public participation in governance and issue advisory to States.

Thanking you,