TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (6) TMI 675
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....District Jodhpur ("subject property"), and they obtained a loan of Rs.7,50,00,000/- from Respondent No.1. On 23.05.2014, the Board of Directors of the appellant company passed a resolution authorising their Managing Director Mr. Vinod Singhvi, and authorised representative Mr. Mahaveer Lunia (Respondent No.1), to sell the subject property. Pursuant to the said Board resolution, on 24.05.2014, Mr. Vinod Singhvi executed unregistered power of attorney and agreement to sell in favour of Respondent No.1, concerning the subject property. 3.2. Subsequently, on 12.08.2015, the original sale deeds through which the appellant company had purchased the subject property were impounded by the Collector of Stamps for insufficient stamp duty. The appellant company challenged this action by filing a revision petition before the Rajasthan Tax Board, which allowed the revision and remanded the matter to the Collector of Stamps for re-adjudication. In the meanwhile, the appellant company handed over the original documents pertaining to the suit property to the private respondents as security for the loan obtained by them. 3.3. In April, 2022, when the appellant company approached the private respo....
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....uent to the revocation of the power of attorney on 27.05.2022. The High Court erroneously treated the entire plaint as unsustainable based on the alleged invalidity of the first cause of action, without adjudicating upon the second. 4.3. The Board Resolution and the General Power of Attorney executed in favour of Respondent No.1 were revoked on 24.05.2022 and 27.05.2022, respectively. Hence, the execution of sale deeds thereafter is non-est in law and raises serious questions of validity, which must be tried by a civil court. 4.4. Under sections 17, 23 and 49 of the Registration Act, 1908, an unregistered agreement to sell is inadmissible in evidence for the purpose of transferring title. No steps were taken to register the agreement to sell dated 24.05.2014, nor was any suit for specific performance filed by the private respondents. Thus, the document has no legal sanctity in establishing ownership or rights in immovable property. 4.5. It is well settled that title to immovable property can only be adjudicated by a competent civil court and not by revenue authorities. Reliance was placed on Suraj Bhan v. Financial Commissioner (2007) 6 SCC 186 and Jitendra v. State of Madhya Pr....
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....the jurisdiction of the civil court. 5.4. The appellant has merged the claim for redemption of mortgage into declaratory reliefs without separately praying for redemption or paying the necessary court fee. This improper pleading supports the High Court's conclusion that the suit is not maintainable. 5.5. Regarding mutation entries in the respondents' favour, it is submitted that once the sale deeds are validly executed and registered, the corresponding mutation is a natural administrative consequence. 5.6. The High Court's view is consistent with binding precedents including Pyare Lal v. Shubhendra Pilania and Others (2019) 3 SCC 692, wherein, it was held that suits for declaration of khatedari rights must be adjudicated by revenue courts. 5.7. The High Court correctly exercised its jurisdiction under Order VII Rule 11 CPC in rejecting the plaint at the threshold, given the absence of a valid cause of action, jurisdictional infirmities, and procedural impropriety in the reliefs sought by the appellant. Thus, the learned counsel submitted that the impugned order passed by the High Court does not warrant any interference by this Court. 6. We have heard the learned counsel appea....
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....aw, is undervalued, or is insufficiently stamped. At this preliminary stage, the court is required to confine its examination strictly to the averments made in the plaint and not venture into the merits or veracity of the claims. If any triable issues arise from the pleadings, the suit cannot be summarily rejected. Keeping in mind this settled principle of law, we proceed to examine whether the High Court was justified in rejecting the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 CPC. 9. Admittedly, the appellant is the owner of the subject property. As stated in the plaint, the appellant received Rs. 7.5 crores from Respondent No. 1 in 2014 through cheques, in consideration of which, unregistered power of attorney and agreement to sell were executed, purportedly based on a board resolution. Subsequently, those documents were revoked by the appellant on 24.05.2022 and 27.05.2022 respectively. Despite the revocation and the fact that the documents were unregistered, Respondent No. 1 executed sale deeds on 13.07.2022 and 14.07.2022, which were registered on 19.07.2022, in his favour and in favour of Respondent Nos. 2 to 4. As per the settled law, in the absence of registration, such documents do ....
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....e effected by registered instrument. By virtue of proviso, therefore, an unregistered sale deed of an immovable property of the value of Rs.100 and more could be admitted in evidence as evidence of a contract in a suit for specific performance of the contract. Such an unregistered sale deed can also be admitted in evidence as an evidence of any collateral transaction not required to be effected by registered document. When an unregistered sale deed is tendered in evidence, not as evidence of a completed sale, but as proof of an oral agreement of sale, the deed can be received in evidence making an endorsement that it is received only as evidence of an oral agreement of sale under the proviso to Section 49 of the 1908 Act. 13. Recently in K.B. Shah and Sons (P) Ltd v. Development Consultant Ltd, this Court noticed the following statement of Mulla in his Indian Registration Act, (7th Edn., at p. 189): "The High Courts of Calcutta, Bombay, Allahabad, Madras, Patna, Lahore, Assam, Nagpur, Pepsu, Rajasthan, Orissa, Rangoon and Jammu & Kashmir; the former Chief Court of Oudh; the Judicial Commissioner's Court of Peshawar, Ajmer and Himachal Pradesh and the Supreme Court have he....
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....n, or b)confer any power to adopt, or (c) be received as evidence of any transaction affecting such property or conferring such power, unless it has been registered: Provided that an unregistered document affecting immovable property and required by this Act or the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 to be registered may be received as evidence of a contract in a suit for specific performance under Chapter II of the Specific Relief Act, 1877 or as evidence of any collateral transaction not required to be effected by registered instrument." 10. In Kaladevi (supra), this Court has held that an unregistered document may be received as evidence of a contract in a suit seeking specific performance. ..." In the present case, Respondent No.1 has not instituted any suit for specific performance. Moreover, the power of attorney relied upon was unregistered and had already been revoked prior to the execution of the sale deeds. Therefore, Respondent No.1 cannot rely on the unregistered documents to assert any proprietary rights and had no valid authority to execute the impugned sale deeds. 9.2. Additionally, Section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, categorically provides that ....
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....91 of the Trusts Act. The personal obligation created by a contract of sale is described in Section 40 of the Transfer of Property Act as an obligation arising out of contract and annexed to the ownership of property, but not amounting to an interest or easement therein. 33. In India, the word `transfer' is defined with reference to the word `convey'. The word `conveys' in Section 5 of Transfer of Property Act is used in the wider sense of conveying ownership... 37....that only on execution of conveyance, ownership passes from one party to another...." 17. In Rambhau Namdeo Gajre v. Narayan Bapuji Dhotra [2004 (8) SCC 614] this Court held: "10. Protection provided under Section 53-A of the Act to the proposed transferee is a shield only against the transferor. It disentitles the transferor from disturbing the possession of the proposed transferee who is put in possession in pursuance to such an agreement. It has nothing to do with the ownership of the proposed transferor who remains full owner of the property till it is legally conveyed by executing a registered sale deed in favour of the transferee. Such a right to protect possession against the proposed ve....
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....52. Execution of a power of attorney in terms of the provisions of the Contract Act as also the Powers of Attorney Act is valid. A power of attorney, we have noticed hereinbefore, is executed by the donor so as to enable the donee to act on his behalf. Except in cases where power of attorney is coupled with interest, it is revocable. The donee in exercise of his power under such power of attorney only acts in place of the donor subject of course to the powers granted to him by reason thereof. He cannot use the power of attorney for his own benefit. He acts in a fiduciary capacity. Any act of infidelity or breach of trust is a matter between the donor and the donee." An attorney holder may however execute a deed of conveyance in exercise of the power granted under the power of attorney and convey title on behalf of the grantor. Scope of Will 22. A will is the testament of the testator. It is a posthumous disposition of the estate of the testator directing distribution of his estate upon his death. It is not a transfer inter vivos. The two essential characteristics of a will are that it is intended to come into effect only after the death of the testator and is revocable at any....
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....e it was reiterated that title and ownership of immovable property can only be conveyed by a registered deed of sale. The following observations are significant: "25. The observations made by this Court in Suraj Lamp (supra) in paras 16 and 19 are also relevant. ..... 26. Suraj Lamp (supra) later came to be referred to and relied upon by this Court in Shakeel Ahmed v. Syed Akhlaq Hussain, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 1526 wherein the Court after referring to its earlier judgment held that the person relying upon the customary documents cannot claim to be the owner of the immovable property and consequently not maintain any claims against a third-party. The relevant paras read as under:- "10. Having considered the submissions at the outset, it is to be emphasized that irrespective of what was decided in the case of Suraj Lamps and Industries (supra) the fact remains that no title could be transferred with respect to immovable properties on the basis of an unregistered Agreement to Sell or on the basis of an unregistered General Power of Attorney. The Registration Act, 1908 clearly provides that a document which requires compulsory registration under the Act, would not confer any ri....
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....hat a transfer of immovable property by way of sale can only be by a deed of conveyance. An agreement to sell is not a conveyance. It is not a document of title or a deed of transfer of deed of transfer of property and does not confer ownership right or title. In Suraj Lamp (supra) this Court had reiterated that an agreement to sell does not meet the requirements of Sections 54 and 55 of the TPA to effectuate a 'transfer'. ... 51. Section 17(1)(b) prescribes that any document which purports or intends to create, declare, assign, limit or extinguish any right, title or interest, whether vested or contingent, of the value of one hundred rupees and upwards to or in immovable property is compulsorily registerable. Whereas, section 49 prescribes that the documents which are required to be registered under Section 17 will not affect any immovable property unless it has been registered. .... 53. Even from the combined reading of the POA and the agreement to sell, the submission of the appellants fails as combined reading of the two documents would mean that by executing the POA along with agreement to sell, the holder had an interest in the immovable property. If interest had ....
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....er the said provision, such as under-valuation, insufficient court fees, or bar by any law. In this context, we may place reliance on the judgment in Central Bank of India (supra), wherein, this Court while examining the jurisdiction of civil courts in disputes involving immovable property and proceedings under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002, held that a plaint cannot be rejected in its entirety merely because one of the prayers or reliefs sought is legally untenable, so long as other reliefs are maintainable and based on independent causes of action. The relevant paragraphs are extracted below: "15. The plaintiff in her suit has prayed for 3 reliefs: a) The first relief is in relation to a sale deed executed by Sumer Chand Jain in favour of Parmeshwar Das Prajapati. b) The second relief is in relation to a mortgage deed executed by Parmeshwar Das Prajapati in favour of the bank. c) The third relief is for being handed over the possession of the suit property. 24. Even if we would have been persuaded to take the view that the third relief is barred by Section 17(3) of the SARFAESI Act, still the....
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....e entries are administrative in nature and intended only for fiscal purposes. This position has been consistently upheld by this court, including in Suraj Bhan v. Financial Commissioner and Jitendra v. State of Madhya Pradesh (supra). It is also to be reiterated that the issues raised in the plaint pertain to ownership, validity of sale deeds, and declaration of title, which are civil in nature and, therefore, triable exclusively by a civil court. In view of this, the applicability of Section 207 of the Rajasthan Tenancy Act, 1955 - which bars the jurisdiction of civil courts in matters relating to khatedari rights and recovery of possession based on tenancy - does not arise in the present case. However, by rejecting the plaint and reversing the trial Court's well-reasoned order, the High Court assumed jurisdiction not vested in it at this preliminary stage, thereby committing a jurisdictional error. 11. Another contention raised by the appellant is that the suit cannot be dismissed merely on the ground of insufficient court fee. The law mandates that the plaintiff be afforded an opportunity to rectify such deficiency. Only upon failure to comply, can the plaint be rejected. This ....