Registrations grind to a halt in Telangana

Glitches in electronic equipment have hit the highest revenue-earning Stamps and Registration Department hard

Hyderabad: Services like property and firm registrations being offered by the Stamps and Registration Department, one of the highest revenue-earning departments in Telangana State, have been hit hard as the computers and other peripherals installed in almost all the registration offices developed technical glitches due to non-maintenance for the last three months.

Customers, who arrived at these offices on Saturday were forced to wait for hours on end to complete the registration work. Top officials of the department said the computers, servers, printers, scanners and other electronic peripherals in the offices had stopped functioning properly as the facilities management service provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) withdrew its services in August.

Officials said the TCS had entered into an agreement with the State government three years ago to maintain the computers and other hardware equipment and the government had agreed to pay Rs 15 crore towards charges for services. The private agency stopped services after the three-year agreement ended recently. Since then, technical problems had been cropping up frequently in every registration office. As a result, services offered to the people were getting delayed every day.

Due to non-maintenance of the equipment for more than three months, many of the installations had stopped functioning and the problem was aggravating as the department found it difficult to address the issue without hiring a service consultancy. The department brought to the notice of the government the necessity of renewal of the agreement a year ago, but it fell on deaf ears.