Buyers often assume that a clean encumbrance certificate means clean title. It does not. An EC records registered transactions against a property for a given period at a given sub-registrar's office. It says nothing about whether the seller had the right to sell, whether an heir was left out of a partition, or whether the building has planning approval.
A title scrutiny is broader, and in older localities — where properties have passed through several generations, oral partitions and undivided shares — it is the only thing standing between a buyer and a suit.
The chain of title
The starting point is the parent document: how the current owner came to own the property, and how the person before them did, going back through a search period conventionally taken as thirty years. Each link is checked for whether the transfer was validly made, properly stamped and duly registered. A gap in the chain is not fatal, but it has to be explained before money moves.
Who else could claim
Where title came through inheritance, every heir with a share must have joined the earlier transfer or released their interest. Where the property was divided, the partition or release deed is examined. Where a female heir's share is involved, the position depends on the date of the succession and the law then applying. These are the claims that surface years later, and they surface against the buyer.
Encumbrances, and what an EC misses
The EC is pulled for the full search period, and cross-checked against the seller's account. But unregistered mortgages by deposit of title deeds, agreements to sell, pending litigation, tax arrears and attachment orders may not appear on it at all. Physical possession, a search of the relevant courts, and up-to-date tax receipts fill part of the gap.
Revenue and planning records
- Patta and chitta, and whether the extent shown matches the deed and the actual measurement.
- Approved plan and planning permission, and whether the construction as built matches them.
- Permitted land use, against what the buyer actually intends to do with the property.
- Property tax, water tax and any pending demand.
- Whether the property falls in a notified, reserved or acquisition-affected area.
The output
A title scrutiny should end in a written opinion that says one of three things: title is marketable; title is marketable subject to specific defects being cured before completion; or title is not marketable. The second is the most common, and the useful part of the opinion is the list of what has to be produced or executed at or before registration.