Unregistered and insufficiently stamped instruments like sale agreements and sale deeds cannot affect an immovable property, the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court (HC) has ruled. While dismissing a petition in the Vijay Kumar and Another versus Surinder Partap and Another case, the HC said that an unregistered agreement to sell could not be used by the petitioners to protect their possession.
“A document that is required to be registered under Section 17 of the Registration Act but is not registered cannot affect the immoveable property that is the subject matter of that instrument. Thus, when the petitioners had based their suit for injunction demonstrating their alleged possession in respect of suit land on the basis of unregistered and insufficiently stamped instrument, which under law does not affect such immovable property, the petitioners had no prima facie case in their favour,” the single-judge Bench of Justice Rajnesh Oswal said.
Case study
In the case, the petitioner, Surinder Partap Singh, had filed the suit for permanent prohibitory injunction against the respondents, Vijay Kumar and others, for land measuring 24 kanals, 5 marlas comprising Khasra numbers 136, 247, 248 min 249, 250, 204 situated at Kathlai, Samba on the ground that the respondent number 3 had entered into an agreement to sell it on October 17, 2018, in the capacity of an attorney holder. An amount of Rs 3 lakh was paid to respondent number 3 and the possession of the land was also delivered. As the respondents tried to occupy the suit property forcibly, the petitioners filed the suit for injunction against them and also filed an application for grant of interim relief. The trial court in May 2019 passed an ex-parte interim order, directing the parties to maintain a status quo on the suit property.
Thereafter, respondents 1 and 2 filed their written statement, in which they stated that they had never executed any power of attorney exclusively in favour of respondent number 3, and that he was not competent to execute any document. The trial court in 2020 restrained the respondents from alienating and creating any further charge during the pendency of the suit and from dispossessing the respondents from the suit land till the disposal of the suit.
