Patna(Bihar Times): After the enactment of a new apartment Act over 1,600 flats have been registered in Patna till March 31, 2007, that is the last day of registration. In the last week of March the rush for registration increased as many people, who were thinking that the government would extend the date, finally decided to register their flats. The registry officials had to work till late in the night. According to an estimate each day over 200 registration have been done in the registry office of Patna in the last few days. Thus the government’s income from the registration has increased up to Rs 15 to 20 crore though it is yet to achieve the target of Rs 100 crore set for this financial year.

The new apartment Act removed the earlier confusion. The registration rate has been made more reasonable now. The flat-owners used to avoid getting their flats registered because the allotment letter given to them by the builders was as good as ownership letter. Thus the flat-owners did not deem it fit even to get their flats registered in the metropolitan cities as in the case of sale and purchase of land. The stamp duty in the metros is much less than Bihar.

There are more than 650 apartments in Patna with each having on an average 16 flats, thus the total number of flats are over 10,000. For the last one month the registration office has been kept open even on Saturday and Sundays while a helpline has also been made operational.

Still a large number of flat-owners are not keen in registrating their property because of the high stamp rates while many has postponed their plan because of the financial crunch. One of the reason is that the builders, in many cases, are demanding arbitrary charges for transferring the title of the flats to the allottees.

Besides, many NRIs living abroad could not get their flats registered as they either could not get leave or did not deem it fit to return just for the sake of registration. If the date is extended further many such NRIs may get their flats registered.