The Income Tax (IT) Department has intensified its scrutiny of Sub-registrar offices after uncovering large-scale concealment of property transactions in Nagpur, Hingna and Buldhana. In its latest survey, officials inspected Sadar and Mhalgi Nagar sub-registrar offices on Tuesday, going through property purchase and sale records of the past five years. The checks continued till late night, with employees and sub-registrars questioned and several incriminating documents reportedly seized. Acing on a tip-off, the IT teams raided the office in Sadar and Mhalgi Nagar and started scrutiny of the documents.

 

The sudden action by the IT Department stunned many officials and sub-registrar offices. After scutinising the documents from the offices, the IT officials came to the conclusion that around Rs 500 crore worth of transactions were not reported by each office in the past five years. Now, the IT officials are investigating the reason behind non-disclosure of the transactions. Many incriminating documents have been seized from the offices and IT officials scanning the name of the Sub-Registrars who were involved in the entire process and tried to hide the details from the IT Department. Sources futher informed that the IT officials are investigating roles of the senior revenue officials in the scam. While the Sub-Registrar Offices in Nagpur have not reported transactions worth hundreds of the crores, Malkapur office in Buldhana failed to disclose deals of about 20 crore.

 

High-value deals bypassed Department officials said that these were not technical lapses but a method in which transactions are duly recorded on the state’s iSarita property registration portal but are deliberately not pushed into the Statement of Financial Transactions database. This selective omission allows high-value deals to bypass automated checks and remain outside the tax net. Under the Income Tax Act, all property transactions of Rs 30 lakh and above must be reported through prescribed forms on the Insight portal.

 

The department has underlined that despite outreach and awareness programmes conducted since May, and the requirement to furnish records by May 21 every year, many sub-registrar offices have failed to rectify mistakes or upload pending data. Even after about a month after the first survey, the compliance gap remains wide. The Inspector General of Registration and Controller of Stamps, Maharashtra State, Pune, has not disclosed publicly any information on what action has been taken at their level. Officials say that such operations will closely follow in other parts of the Vidarbha region to detect similar lapses.