Property due diligence in India is undergoing a transformation that is simultaneously creating new possibilities and new challenges for practitioners and buyers.
Dr. Sravan Kumar, author of The Indian Law of Property Due Diligence and Title Examination, addresses the reform landscape, digitisation progress, and the future of property verification in the book’s concluding chapters with the measured assessment of a practitioner who sees both what has improved and what remains to be done.
What RERA has genuinely changed:
The Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, 2016 created a statutory registration requirement for developer projects that did not exist before. It created disclosure obligations about project approvals, completion timelines, and escrow arrangements for buyer funds. It created a regulatory authority with power to take action against non-compliant promoters.
These are genuine improvements. A buyer purchasing in a RERA-registered project in 2025 has access to more information about the project’s regulatory status than a buyer in 2015 did. The portal disclosures, the quarterly progress updates, and the escrow mechanism for funds provide structural protections that were absent before the Act.
But RERA registration covers only new developer projects. It does not address resale transactions. It does not resolve the title chain questions that exist in independent properties. It does not eliminate the need for a court records search, an encumbrance verification, or a statutory approvals examination in any transaction where those issues are relevant.
What the Digital India Land Records programme is still working towards:
The aspiration of the DILRMP is a fully integrated land record system where title information, registration records, survey boundaries, and mutation history are combined in a single verified database. Some states have made significant progress. The aspiration has not yet been achieved uniformly.
Until the convergence of these systems is complete and the records are independently verified for accuracy, the structured five-dimension due diligence methodology remains the professional standard. The shortcut of portal verification without physical document examination and public records cross-referencing remains legally inadequate.
What the book offers in this changing landscape:
The statutory framework does not change with technology. The Transfer of Property Act, the Registration Act, the Indian Stamp Act, the Indian Contract Act, and the Specific Relief Act provide the legal foundations that every property transaction in India must satisfy. These statutes have evolved through judicial interpretation across decades. They will continue to govern property transactions regardless of what technological improvements are made to land records systems.
A practitioner and buyer who understands the statutory framework is equipped to navigate whatever technological environment they encounter. The five-dimension methodology in this book is built on statutory foundations that technology can support but not replace.
The Indian Law of Property Due Diligence and Title Examination by Dr. Sravan Kumar is available on Amazon, Flipkart, Kindle, and Google Books. Buy now and understand the legal framework that governs Indian property transactions regardless of what technological improvements surround it.
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