Margao Civil Registrar office: Corruption allegations and inefficiency go hand in hand

NESHWIN ALMEIDA

neshwin@herald-goa.com 

The Civil registrar office of Margao for Salcete taluka is abuzz from Monday to Friday as a lot of people from all over the taluka come here to get their work done.

The Civil Registrar is an authority on Civil marriages, certifying sale deeds, property transfer, sale of property, registering partnerships, relinquishment of assets and succession deeds for the entire Salcete taluka. The office is located in the Late Matanhy Saldanha Administrative Complex, Margao.

This office, led by Chandrakant Pissurlekar deals with recording and preserving evidentiary matters relating to contracts, status, testamentary dispositions, of individual citizens, like marriages, legitimations, adoptions, documents relating to contractual obligations, property transactions, firms, wills, succession deeds, societies, appointment of notaries etc. 

“All this involves maintaining records of many years and we also house the planning and statistics department who issue birth certificates before 1961 and hence, there is a huge crowd applying for birth records in Salcete. If they face any difficulty, we have to face the brunt,” explains Pissurlekar, who’s in this office for a second stint since December 2015.

Pissurlekar was at in this office as Sub Registrar between the year 2005 to 2011 and returns as the Civil Registrar as of Dec 2015. From the year 2011 to 2015, Suraj Vernekar was the Sub Registrar. Suraj’s stint is believed to be the one that transformed the office of the Sub registrar in many ways who implemented the time bound delivery act of the government. It was passed much before it was formally implemented. 

Records of birth and marriages before 1961 and before liberation were owned by the Archives and Archaelogy department and people had to face huge difficulties and travel all the way to Panjim to acquire the same. Hence, the records were transferred to the Planning and Statistics department and then decided to be issued from the Sub Registrar’s office because of the lack of staff.

Pissurlekar explains to us how the office has to entertain couples, people registering sale and purchase of properties, business and partnerships registrations and has to look into records of birth since there is a huge demand for the same as Xaxti residents continuously need birth records and the ‘teor’ which is the transcribe of the original record on the book.

The records are in demand since Xaxti’s large population generally requires these documents to file their request for the prized Portuguese passports, a ticket to Europe without a visa.

Long lines, agents, lawyers, some influence, some underhand gifts and money to staff in the office, touts posed in lawyer suits and sometimes senior clerks too are all hand in glove to ensure your work is done first, your deed is written out of turn ahead of others, the mutilated archives are searched first for the Portuguese passport application and all this done through a dirty corruption scam of misusing government offices.

For urgent birth records, out of turn, there’s agent Wilson

Most common is the agent named Wilson who charges between Rs 400 to Rs 1200 to get a teor or birth record that a Portuguese passport applicant requires. The charge ranges on the basis of time, if the record or certificate is needed the next morning itself or within two days, then that determines the fee by agent Wilson since the office counter takes almost 20 days. Another instance was of the cashier in the department herself taking a bribe for issuing a certificate quicker.The current sub registrar  himself faces a history of being suspended on his previous stint in the same office. Pissurlekar had a history of taking kickbacks to issue and sign documents and hence was placed on suspension in 2014 from the Panjim Sub Registrar’s office. Earlier in February 2008, as Margao Sub Registrar, Pissurlekar faced the ire of registering the marriage of Sanjay Dutt and Manyata despite Manyata not being a resident of Goa and having a false residence certificate. Even worse, Manyata had not yet obtained a divorce from her previous marriage with Mehraj Shaikh. The matter was probed also for how the Sub Registrar took the marriage books from the Margao Office to the Aquem residence where Sanjay Dutt and Manyata were lodged. Sub-registrar Suraj Verenkar who is transferred to Dharbandora taluka on December 09, 2015 and spent four years at the Margao office explains that the Salcete office faces a space crunch especially to maintain records and store them.

Time bound delivery? What’s that?

People feel disillusioned that the time bound delivery act is no more applicable in the Sub Registrar’s office and all kinds of certificates are issued after huge delays. Even registration of partnership deeds seem to take forever.

“We have taken a loan to pay the agent for my son’s Portuguese passport and now the Civil Registrar’s office is taking over 25 days to issue a certificate. Someone even gave me the contact number of one Wilson, being 0807538693 and told me to say I am Pobre’s friend and requested this Wilson to issue my certificates and get without 24 hours. I did the needful, paid the bribe and walked out,” said a resident of Margao.

Similarly, Luis Fernandes explains to us how the lawyers at the Civil Registar’s also work as agents and get their work done first and stand in queues ahead of people coming to the office.