Hyderabad: All property owners in the state will soon have to register Know Your Customer details.
This is part of the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988, which came into force from November 1 this year. It is aimed to check benami property transactions and flow of black money into the real estate sector.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced that after demonetisation, his next immediate focus would be on unearthing benami property deals.
Property owners have to produce KYC details at municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats to prove that they own the properties. Properties without KYC will be treated as benami properties and the Act empowers government to confiscate such properties.
At present, most of the property transactions are linked with Aadhaar. In the new KYC norms, details of bank accounts, PAN numbers and passport details will also be linked.
Official sources said the Centre has sent a circular to all the states instructing them to put the required mechanism in place to begin KYC registration of properties “at the earliest.”.
Sudden impact.
“Though no timeframe has been prescribed by the Centre as to when the process would begin, there are indications that it may take place early 2017 during February-March," sources added.
The KYC registration would be taken up on the lines of the oil marketing companies which took up KYC exercise in 2013 to weed out bogus connections.
All LPG consumers were asked to submit KYC forms at gas distribution agencies and provide the Aadhaar, bank account and address details.
The database was uploaded online and software was devised to scrutinise the database. This exercise proved a big success as it tracked lakhs of bogus and multiple gas connections across the country, which were subsequently cancelled, saving of thousands of crores of rupees in subsidy bills.
“A notification will be issued seeking KYC registration from all property owners. They will be given two to three months to file the details at local bodies across the state. They have to give a declaration on the properties owned by them,” the officer told this correspondent.
The source of income for owning the property will not be asked as part of KYC. “Only suspicious KYC declarations will be referred to necessary investigation agencies for inquiry, who will investigate whether the owner possess required financial resources to buy a particular property or hold multiple properties.”
