TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1961 (4) TMI 103
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....Pandeys executed a deed of sale in favour of the respondent purchaser in respect of their aforesaid house. The appellants claim a right of areemption on account of this sale. The consideration mentioned in the deed was Rs. 2,000. There was a subsisting mortgage on that house and the deed provided that out of the consideration a sum of Rs. 200 would be left with the respondent purchaser for clearing off that mortgage. The deed also recited that the Pandeys had received Rs. 400 and "the remaining Rs. 1,400 (Rupees fourteen hundred) in cash at the time of exchange of equivalents, (that is) at the time of (handing over) of the receipt of this deed............... On receipt of the whole and entire amount of consideration money we have put the said claimant into possession and occupation of this vended property as absolute owner in place of us, the executants and our heirs and representatives." The deed further stated, "this sale deed becomes operative from the date when we the executants affixed-our signatures thereon. Whatever title, we, the executants and our heirs had............. with respect to this vended property, has become extinct, inoperative and null and void and the same has....
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....gistered" as registered under the law for the time being in force regulating the registration of documents. This, in the present case, means the Registration Act of 1908. It is not in dispute that the registration under the Registration Act is not complete till the document to be registered has been, copied out in the records of the Registration Office as provided in s. 61 of that Act. It was therefore con. tended in the High Court that when a sale had to be made by a registered instrument it became complete only on the instrument of sale being copied in the books of the Registration Office. The High Court accepted this view and held that the sale in the present case, therefore, became complete on the completion of the registration of the instrument of sale which was done on February 9, 1946 when the instrument was copied out in the books of the Registration Office. In this view of the matter, the High Court came to the conclusion that the appellants were not entitled to enforce their right of preemption because they had not made the preliminary demand after the completion of the sale as the law required them to do, but before, that is, on February 2, 1946. In answer to this vie....
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....y virtue of s. 47 the instrument by which it is effected, after it has been registered, commences to operate from an earlier date. Therefore we do not think that the sale in this case can be said, in view of s. 47, to have been completed on January 31, 1946. The view that we have taken of s. 47 of the Registration Act seems to have been taken in Tilakdhari Singh v. Gour Narain (1). We believe that the same view was expressed in Nareshchandra Datta v. Gireeshchandra Das (2) and Gobardhan Bar v. Guna Dhar Bar (3). With regard to the two cases on which the Attorney General has relied, it has to be observed that they were not concerned with a right of pre-emption arising on a sale of property. Bindeshri Prasad's case (4) was concerned with a suit for zar-i-chaharum. It does not appear from the report what that right was or when it arose. It is not possible therefore to derive much assistance from it. Gopal Ram's case(') was concerned with a right of pre-emption arising on the grant of a lease and the question was whether the suit for the enforcement of such a right was barred by limitation. It appears that Art. 120 was applied to that suit and it was held that the cause ....
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....1946 were performed by the appellant after the right of preemption accrued to her, viz.,, after the sale in favour of the respondent was effected or were they premature. At one time there was a controversy as to whether it was the principle of the Muslim law that would determine the point of time when a sale should be taken to be complete (under which system crucial significance was attached to two of the ingredients of a sale, viz., payment of consideration and delivery of possession) or whether after the enactment of the Transfer of Property Act it was to the statute and to the creteria laid down by it that one has to turn to determine when a sale should be held to have taken place. The former view found favour with the majority of the Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Begam v. Muhammad (1), Justice Banerjee dissenting from the majority. This controversy, however, is long past and it has now been decided by this Court in Radha Kishan v. Shri Dhar Ram Chandra ([1961] 1 S.C.R. 248) that the provisions of the Transfer of Property Act supersede the principles of the. Mohammedan law as to sale and it was to the statute that one should look to find out whether, and if so when, ....
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....uch reliance has been placed by learned Counsel for the respondent and, indeed, in the judgment of the High Court, on the words the "registration of the document shall thereupon be deemed complete" occurring in sub-s. (2) of s. 61. But in the context of the fasciculus of sections in which it appears it is clear that it refers to the fact that the registering officer had completed his duty and had no more to do with the document presented to him, beyond returning the original to the party entitled to receive the same. In our opinion, these words have nothing to do with the time from which the transaction covered by the registered document operates or with reference to the present context, when the sale evidenced by the deed, becomes complete. Specific provision is made for these in s. 47 of the Registration Act which reads: "A registered document shall operate from the time from which it would have commenced to operate if no registration thereof had been required or made, and not from the time of its registration." The principles underlying ss. 61(2) and 47 are not divergent. It is not as if, that any delay by the registering officer which might take place owing to the pres....
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....d its terms explicit, no evidence to contradict them would be admissible. Paragraph 4 of this document of the sale-deed Ex. 'A' dated January 31, 1946 recites the consideration for the same. This was to consist of Rs. 2,000. Out of this, it states that the vendors had received Rs. 400 in cash at the time of the execution of the document, and that Rs. 200 had been left with the purchaser for payment to a previous possessory mortgagee. In regard to the balance of Rs. 1,400 the recital reads: "and received the remaining sum of Rs. 1,400 in cash at the time of exchange of equivalents, (that is) at the time of handing over of the receipt of this deed. In this manner we have received the entire amount of consideration money for this vended property from the claimant and brought the same to our possession and use." It is, no doubt, true that the sum of Rs. 1,400 had not been received on January 31, 1946, the date of the execution of the document and that it was agreed that sum would be paid in exchange for the delivery of the receipt obtained from the Registrar in respect of the sale-deed presented for registration. But the use of the past tense clearly indicates that ....