About ₹78,000 crore lay unclaimed with banks, ₹14,000 crore with insurers, ₹9,000 crore in unpaid dividends and ₹3,000 crore with mutual funds. By 28 February 2026, ₹5,777 crore had been returned across 2.29mn (million) claims. Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s depositor education and awareness fund (DEA Fund) still held ₹60,518 crore as of 31 January 2026. A significant part of this is money that families never claimed after a death, either because they did not know it existed or because the transfer process defeated them.
The finding highlights the continued role of corruption in inheritance-related transactions, despite efforts to digitise land records and government processes. The survey covered the transfer of property, mutual funds and shares, brokerage accounts, bank accounts, jewellery and other assets following the death of a family member over the past 10 years.
The LocalCircles survey, which received more than 32,000 responses from citizens across 349 districts, found that transferring assets after the death of a family member remains far from straightforward. “Claiming inheritance in India is no easy task. It is ironic that for the common man it is a herculean task even when there is a signed, witnessed, and registered will by the deceased, who was fit during the process of writing it. The inevitable outcome in the event of rightful claimants not reaching an understanding is that the inheritance dispute lands in court, sometimes taking more than a decade before a resolution is reached or a court order settles the case. Even when there is no dispute, going by people’s experience, the cases can take a long time to be resolved if property papers are not in order or there are debts to be cleared, or anyone makes false claims or there are other issues,” LocalCircles says.
According to the survey, only 32% of 11,319 respondents said their families were able to easily transfer the assets of a deceased family member. Of these, 11% said the process was straightforward because there was a registered Will, while 21% said they did not have a registered Will but were, nevertheless, able to complete the transfer.
For the remaining families, the process proved considerably more difficult. Around 16% said that despite having a registered Will, they had not been able to complete the transfer process. Another 21% said they did not have a registered Will and found the process very difficult, while 16% said they did not have a registered Will and were unable to complete the transfer. A further 10% had not yet initiated the transfer process, while 5% could not give a clear response.
The findings come four years after LocalCircles conducted its earlier survey on the issue and indicate that families' experiences have not improved, despite the digitisation of several government services.
On the issue of bribes, 58% of the 10,935 respondents who answered the question said they had to pay a bribe, either directly or indirectly, to have a deceased family member's assets transferred. Of these, 29% said they had to pay bribes in one or two places, while another 29% said they had to pay in several places.
In comparison, 24% said they did not face a situation where they had to pay a bribe, while 10% had not initiated the transfer process. Another 5% could not give a clear response.
LocalCircles said it was unfortunate that people were being forced to pay bribes even when they had the requisite documents, either to complete a normal process or to speed it up, despite government claims of widespread digitisation.
The incidence of reported bribery has also increased since the organisation’s previous survey. In 2022, 52% of families surveyed by LocalCircles had said they had to pay bribes to get properties and assets of a deceased family member transferred. The latest survey puts the figure at 58%, an increase of six percentage points over four years.
Property registration and land transfer offices emerged as the biggest source of reported bribe payments. Of the 10,806 respondents who answered the question on where bribes had to be paid, 73% indicated that they had paid a bribe at the property registration or land transfer office to get the assets transferred.
The survey found that 18% paid bribes only at the property registration office or the local land office, while 5% paid bribes only at other local and state government offices. Another 4% reported paying bribes at magistrate offices or courts as well as other offices.
Around 33% said they paid bribes at property registration or local land offices as well as other local and state government offices. Another 22% said they had to pay bribes at all three levels. About 18% could not provide a clear response.
The findings highlight the ongoing difficulties in India's property registration and inheritance processes. While land records and several other government services have been digitised, the transfer of inherited property still requires in-person interaction with government departments and officials.
LocalCircles noted that property registration in India continues, in many cases, to rely on physical processes, including the appearance of parties before sub-registrar offices, the submission of physical documents, fingerprints and photographs and the issuance of physical registration certificates. Such processes can make the transfer time-consuming and create opportunities for middlemen and discretionary intervention.
The government has sought to address some of these concerns through proposed reforms. The department of land resources under the Union ministry of rural development placed the Draft Registration Bill, 2025 in the public domain, proposing to replace the Registration Act, 1908 with a modern, online and paperless registration system.
The proposed legislation provides for electronic submission and admission of documents, electronic appearance of parties and witnesses, electronic verification, online interaction between parties and registrars, electronic registration certificates and digital maintenance of records.
However, according to LocalCircles, the draft Bill had not been enacted by the time of its survey, leaving the Registration Act, 1908 and its existing physical processes in force.
Some states have independently introduced reforms. Maharashtra’s inspector general of registration (IGR) launched an e-registration facility in September 2025 that allows property agreements to be registered online through Aadhaar-based e-KYC (e-know-your-customer) and biometric verification, without a visit to the sub-registrar’s office, although it initially covered selected projects.
In Delhi, the government announced an overhaul of sub-registrar offices in May 2026, including online appointments, pre-verification of documents, live application tracking, AI-based face verification and blockchain-secured records. The measures were aimed at reducing the role of middlemen and revenue leakage.
However, LocalCircles said such measures remain state-specific and their effectiveness at scale, particularly for families transferring assets after a death, remains to be established.
The report also pointed to uneven progress in the digitisation of land records under the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme. According to data cited by LocalCircles, 98.5% of rural records of rights had been digitised, covering 647,000 of 657,000 villages, while 89% of sub-registrar offices had integrated registration with revenue records.
However, only 11 states and Union Territories(UTs) had completed the digitisation of cadastral maps. About 72% of villages had cadastral maps linked to records of rights, while only around 30% of land parcels, or 8.4 crore parcels, had been assigned a unique land parcel identification number.
The report said land and property matters continue to account for roughly two-thirds of all civil cases in India.
The problems are not limited to physical property. Families can also face complications while transferring shares, mutual funds, brokerage accounts and bank deposits after the death of an investor or account-holder.
The survey report noted that a Supreme Court ruling in December 2023 held that succession laws would prevail in determining the rights over a deceased shareholder’s property and securities, even where a nominee had been registered.
Regulatory changes have since sought to simplify the transmission of financial assets. A framework from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), effective from 1 March 2025, allows an investor to register up to ten nominees for a demat account or mutual fund folio. It also permits transmission based on a self-attested copy of the death certificate, along with completed KYC.
However, a nominee remains a custodian rather than the owner of the assets and must hand them over to those legally entitled under succession law or a valid will.
On the banking side, the nomination provisions of the Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2025, which came into force on 1 November 2025, allow a depositor to name up to four nominees for a bank deposit account.
The difficulty families face in accessing inherited financial assets is also reflected in the country's large pool of unclaimed money. The report cited the government’s ‘
Aapki Poonji, Aapka Adhikar’ campaign, conducted between October and December 2025, under which the RBI (Reserve Bank of India), SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), IRDAI (insurance regulatory and development authority of India), PFRDA (pension fund regulatory and development authority)
and the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority held camps across 748 districts to help citizens and legal heirs trace forgotten deposits, insurance proceeds, mutual fund folios and unpaid dividends.
LocalCircles said a significant portion of the unclaimed assets could be money that families did not claim after an account-holder's death, either because they were unaware of the assets or because the transfer process was difficult.
The survey organisation has called for a move towards standardised, remote and end-to-end online registration practices across the country. It said the proposed Registration Bill should be finalised and enacted and states should be given a firm timeline to adopt online registration practices.
LocalCircles also suggested that the government consider establishing a special mechanism to deal with straightforward land and property inheritance matters where there is no justification or suspicion of fraud.
The organisation said the latest findings demonstrate that digitisation by itself has not reduced the incidence of bribe payments. Unless physical appearances before officials are eliminated and every step of the transfer process is made trackable online, it argued, the discretion that creates opportunities for bribe demands will remain.
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Nevertheless, bribe is paid at all stages while dealing with such transfer cases which is of course a shame on our public transparency and corruption-free system.
Cockroach Janata Party has exposed so many instances where the courts have either ignored or condoned the illegal behavior of govt officials.
You forgot that you are in india.Your approach was wrong.Ask the concerned person of some consultant ( indirectly his person) and your work will be done after service charges.This is a secret for getting work done in India .Don't waste your time and energy
Try paying everybody if workaable and move ahead in life as a king .