To put a stop to alleged corruption in the brokering process for land deeds in West Bengal, the state will now entirely digitise it from next month onwards, the finance department said.

Currently, certified copies of land or house deeds are available at any registration office in the state for around Rs 150 to 200 each. However, a senior official said, “Because of an unholy nexus of brokers, this cost sometimes goes up to Rs 5,000 and even to Rs 10,000, (and) a person who wants to get a certified copy of a particular deed has to go to the registration office multiple times. It became a Herculean task.”

To put an end to “such unnecessary harassment,” people will be able to obtain a certified copy online by submitting necessary documents and a regulated fee from April 1 onwards, the department official added.

“Those who are not very familiar with the online process can go to our Bangla Sahayak Kendra (BSK) (website) and representatives will help the customer to get a certified copy,” the official said.

Dated from 1985 to 2025, 3 crore deed documents have been digitised, and after verification, they were uploaded to a website by the Directorate of Registration and Stamp Duty under the state’s finance department. Deeds dated from 1965 to 1985 are also in the process of being digitised and uploaded. Through phases like these, the state intends to make every deed document available online.

“A certified copy of a deed is a very useful thing for a person to show address proof. In case of a Partition deed, there is only the original. Others would have certified copies,” the official explained.

Land and house deeds from 2007 onwards were already available online when the state decided to make the online process compulsory. From April onwards, only those documents not available on the website will be permitted to be sought from a registration office.