The Registration Act, 1908

What it does

The Act sets up a public record of documents and makes some documents enter it. Section 17 lists the ones that must be registered. The list that matters most in practice is short: a gift of immovable property, any other document that creates, declares, assigns, limits or extinguishes a right in immovable property worth INR 100 or more, and a lease from year to year or for more than a year. Section 18 lists documents that may be registered if the parties choose.

It then says what registration does. A registered document operates from the time it would have operated if no registration had been needed, under section 47, and not from the day it was registered. And under section 49 a document that had to be registered and was not does not affect the property, and cannot be received as evidence of a transaction affecting it.

Who it binds

Anyone who signs, presents or relies on a document within section 17. The Act also binds the registering officers, the Sub-Registrars and Registrars, who work under the Inspector General of Registration in each State. Registration is run by the States, so fees, the forms of presentation, and whether a document can be lodged online differ from one State to the next, though the Act itself is the same.

What registration does not do

Registration records that a document was executed and presented. It does not certify that the person who signed it had the title they claimed to pass. India has no system in which the register is conclusive of title, so a registered sale deed from someone who did not own the land passes nothing, and the record of rights kept under a State's land revenue law carries only the weight that statute gives it.

The same point runs the other way. The Supreme Court has held more than once that a sale agreement, a general power of attorney and a will, even taken together, do not convey title to immovable property. A sale needs a registered conveyance under section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, and the two Acts are read together on every transfer.

What has changed, and when

• Section 17(1A), inserted in 2001, requires a contract to transfer immovable property for consideration to be registered if the buyer is to rely on part performance under section 53A of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882. An unregistered agreement of that kind made after the amendment gives the buyer no protection under section 53A.
• Section 32A, inserted at the same time, requires the photographs and fingerprints of the buyer and the seller to be affixed to a document of transfer of immovable property presented for registration.
• Several States have added their own amendments, on the documents that must be registered, on refusal to register documents relating to certain lands, and on electronic presentation. A State's amendment is checked before the central text is relied on.

How registration runs

A document is presented at the office of the Sub-Registrar within whose sub-district the property, or any part of it, lies. It must be presented within four months of execution under section 23. Section 25 allows a further four months on payment of a fine, where the delay had an unavoidable cause. The person presenting it is the executant, the person claiming under it, or an agent holding a power of attorney executed and authenticated as section 33 requires. The officer examines the executants, and the document is entered in the books and returned.

Stamp duty is a separate law. It is charged under the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 or the State's own stamp statute, and a document that is not duly stamped can be impounded. A registered document can still fail on stamp.

What turns on it in practice

Three questions recur. Whether the document is one section 17 makes compulsory, because a family settlement, a memorandum of an earlier oral arrangement, and a document that only records a past transaction are treated differently from one that creates a right. Whether an unregistered document can still be used for something, because the proviso to section 49 lets it be received as evidence of a contract in a suit for specific performance, or of a collateral transaction that did not itself need registration. And whether the title behind a registered chain holds, which is a question the register does not answer and a search of the chain has to.