- (1.) The petition challenges an order passed by the Registrar under Section 68 of the Registration Act cancelling a sale deed executed by one Lillawati in favour of the petitioners on 30.04.1998. The cancellation application appears to have been filed on 27.11.1999. Before the Registrar, the contention was that the vendor never executed the sale deed and it had been brought about by impersonation. He took the statement of parties and took a decision that it must have been done through impersonation. Independently of action before the Registrar, a civil suit is said to have been filed by the petitioners for declaration about the validity of the sale where the point for consideration was whether the sale deed was true and valid. The vendor did not appear in court to deny the execution but appeared only through her power of attorney. The court drew an adverse inference against her and upheld the sale through a judgment delivered on 31.10.2009. The vendor Lillawati is reported to have filed an appeal and the case is pending.
(2.) A Registrar's power of superintendence does not extend to cancelling documents and cannot perform the duty of what only a civil court is competent to perform. There have been judicial approaches as regards the power of Registrar to cancel a sale deed and the Allahabad High Court in Raj Kumar Gupta Versus State of UP and others, 2010 AIR(All) 135 held that a person, who is aggrieved by a transaction (in that case, it was a case of Will) will have a only remedy by means of a suit and cannot invoke Section 68 or seek for intervention through the writ petition. The ambit of power of the Registrar was considered by the Supreme Court in Naren Chandra Naskar Versus Arun Bhattacharya and others, 2009 AIR(SC) 27 where the court held that if the High Court's writ jurisdiction under Article 226 directs an enquiry to be conducted by the District Registrar, such directions will be carried through and in such a situation alone, the power of the Registrar cannot be called into question. This is on the basis that the Registrar exercises such power under the direction of the court under Article 226 and does not exercise that power under Section 68 of the Registration Act. The said Section reads as under:- "68. Power of Registrar to superintend and control Sub-Registrars. (1) Every Sub-Registrar shall perform the duties of his office under the superintendence and control of the Registrar in whose district the office of such Sub-Registrar is situate. (2) Every Registrar shall have authority to issue (whether on complaint or otherwise) any order consistent with this Act which he considers necessary in respect of any act or omission of any Sub-Registrar subordinate to him or in respect of the rectification of any error regarding the book or the office in which any document has been registered."
(3.) If at all, the Registrar has only a power to issue instructions to the Registering Officer about any particular information impinging on the formalities of execution and the Registering Officer will exercise appropriate powers under Sections 34 and 35 of the Registration Act to hold proper enquiry about the validity of execution before undertaking the task of registration. This aspect has been considered by the Madras High Court in Pandurangan Versus The Sub-Registrar, 2010 AIR(Mad) 135 The Lahore High Court, a precedent of which, has immense value to this court as its successor, held in Hussain Ali Shah Versus Sardar Ali, 1933 AIR(Lah) 786 that this Section 68 does not confer the power upon the Registrar to cancel registration of a document which has been already registered by the Sub-Registrar. Such order, it was held was ultra vires and will not affect the validity of registration. The Registrar can issue an order under sub-Section (2) where he is of the view that there is some act or omission of the Registering Officer who is subordinate to him. It must be shown that such act or omission was in the performance of his particular duty. If an impersonation takes place and the person identifying the executant has deliberately given a false statement, unless a Registrar failed in the fundamental duty of eliciting knowledge about the identity, the Registrar will have no role to perform. It will not be within the power of the Registrar even not to register a document if there was no material before the Sub-Registrar that any fraud had been perpetrated.;