People queue up in front of Patna registration office on Tuesday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, March 29: With the fee for the registration of land or other real estate properties scheduled to go up from April 1, there is an unusual rush at the registration offices in Patna and Danapur.

People are jostling with each other to deposit the fee and get their flats and plots of land registered before the rates go up by 20 per cent, and in some cases, as much as by 300 per cent.

“I have never seen such a huge crowd of real estate buyers in the past five years in Patna,” said Ramesh Rai, a resident of Bibhutipur near Danapur. Rai (50) had come to the Patna registration office today to help his relative Ganga Prasad get a flat in upscale Boring Road area registered.

He said though his papers were submitted yesterday the process of registration was completed only today. “It was delayed even after the officials worked till late last evening,” Rai said. B.K. Mishra, an employee of a builder and developer, said he had to wait for more than three hours in the queue to get the chaalan issued to deposit the fee in the bank, as the rates of land and flat registration are expected to go higher after March 31.

“We came to know that one has to shell out something between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh more for a two-bedroom-hall-kitchen flat in Patna in the new fiscal,” Mishra said. He added everyone was trying to get their property registered before the date.

In Patna, the registration rate was Rs 2,000 per square feet. Now, it will be anything between Rs 3,000 per sqft and Rs 7,000 per sqft. In rural parts of the district, the fee is expected to rise by 20 per cent, a senior registration department official said.

The administration has opened three counters at Patna registration office in view of the rush of the property buyers and the sellers in the past two weeks. “The office was opened even on Sunday for registration,” said Krishna Kant Mishra, the sub-registrar of Patna registration office.

The officials posted at Patna registration office said on Sunday, around 200 flats and plots were registered. On normal days, an average of 200 flats and plots are registered. But in the past two weeks, about 400 flats and plots have been registered everyday, he added.

Gopal Pandey, an employee at the office, said: “It is very difficult to cope with the situation.” This will continue till March 31, he added.