How to Buy Property (Part 4)

2. The tatima is cut, everything is okay — he gives you the whole chain — you also need to check the jamabandi (periodic record of rights). Is there continuity among these owners? When was the last jamabandi done? Why has there been no jamabandi since then? If your owner — the one you are buying from — his name is in the jamabandi, then look at the year, look at the date, under what order his name came into this jamabandi. After that — because you are buying a valuable property — you should insist that you be provided a 'chhaant' (extract/breakdown) of this account.

A 'chhaant' means: if there's a joint account with a hundred shareholders, or there were ten shareholders, or a hundred shareholders — who sold how much area and when? You need a report of that account. That report will come showing that this account started from A; A had two sons; those two sons each had four sons; those four sons each had two children — all this comes down continuously in the jamabandi, and in the end, in this chhaant, you find out that this person owned so many marlas and sold so many marlas. If you're buying property from B, you're buying from B, B is buying that property from C, C is buying that property from D, and in D's chhaant it turns out that D owned ten marlas but sold fifteen marlas — it could be collusion with the patwari, the patwari's negligence, there could be many mistakes, there could be greed, there could be bribery, there could be fraud, anything is possible — then understand that you are at risk.

The property you are buying is at risk, because the chain running through it has gone bad at one point — that he owned ten marlas but, through collusion, sold fifteen marlas — meaning he sold five marlas more than his share. Now ahead, a dispute is bound to arise — he sold fifteen marlas while entitled to only ten — sooner or later a dispute will arise at some stage that, look, the person you bought from only owned ten marlas, these five marlas are mine — any other shareholder could come forward. This means you should mentally accept this — accept it — that this deal is not good for you. These were the defects — I said I would go through everything one by one, all of it.

Now, since the computerized system came to Punjab, about 60% has become computerized, and in this the patwari's role is said to have ended — although that is not actually true. The confusions the patwari has created in this revenue department — the patwari himself is not letting his own role end. Now this whole computerized system is with the ADLR — Assistant Director Land Records.

Believe me, I have handled dozens of such cases, dozens of them. The ADLR's record does not match the patwari's record — the ADLR gives you a fard, but you're still at the patwari's mercy. So please pay a little attention to these steps I've told you.

Now comes a very dangerous department — the Excise and Taxation Department, established under the Property Tax Act 1958. How did it come about? Let me give you the summary, this lecture is getting long. When this partition happened, properties were under the revenue department; PTDs [property tax demands] were issued, PTOs were issued — all these matters, in their initial stage, went to Excise and Taxation — an extremely dangerous department. How does the fraud start under Excise and Taxation — if you are buying any property, for God's sake, for God's sake, proceed with extreme awareness. This department is the mother of all fraud, because they have created a document, PT-1, and it's beyond my understanding how the Sub-Registrar passes registries on the basis of this document — there's no mechanism. PT-1 has the tenant's name in it, PT-1 has the name of whoever is in possession, PT-1 has the owner's name, PT-1 has the heirs' names — it's a complete mess. This is a long topic, but I only want to tell you this — that you should not rely on PT-1 when buying this property. A PT-1 can come out in my name, it can come out in your name, it can come out in Zaid's name, it can come out in Bakar's name. Someone shows you a property, gets a PT-1 issued for some property, gets the registry done, and disappears — a year later it turns out, sir, I am in possession of a different property altogether — this property doesn't even exist, its property was already someone else's property, already in someone else's possession.