A purchased a plot from NOIDA. Sale deed was signed by the vendee and attesting witnesses on 26.12.84 and by the Administrator of NOIDA on 14.02.85. The deed was not presented for registration as it was not executed "for and on behalf of Governor of U.P". On 01.07.86 Administrator added words "on behalf of Governor of U.P." under his signature. When presented, Sub-Registrar refused the deed on the ground that it was not presented for registration "within four months from the date of its execution" as required by section 23 of the Registration Act. Do you agree with him. Decide and give reasons.

The Governing Provision — Section 24 and the Meaning of "Execution"

Section 23 of the Registration Act requires that a document be presented for registration within four months from the date of its execution. Section 24, however, carves out an important qualification for documents executed by several persons at different times: "Where there are several persons executing a document at different times, such document may be presented for registration and re-registration within four months from the date of each execution." The settled judicial construction of this provision is that, although its language appears to permit partial registration, its practical effect is that the limitation period under Section 23 does not begin to run at all until the last of the executants has executed the instrument. A multipartite instrument — one requiring execution by more than one person to be complete — cannot, in law, be said to have been fully and validly executed until every one of the necessary executants has subscribed to it; the consensus ad idem between the parties is not truly documented until all of them have put their signatures or their equivalent to the deed.

Why the Administrator's Endorsement Was Itself an "Execution"

The vendee and the attesting witnesses signed on 26.12.84, and the Administrator of NOIDA signed on 14.02.85 — but critically, the deed as it stood on 14.02.85 did not purport to bind the Governor of Uttar Pradesh at all, since it lacked the essential recital that the Administrator was signing "for and on behalf of the Governor of U.P." A sale deed of land vested in and to be conveyed by a statutory or governmental authority is only validly executed when it is executed by the person competent to execute it, in the capacity in which alone he is competent to bind the principal on whose behalf the property is held. Until the words "on behalf of Governor of U.P." were added beneath the Administrator's signature, the document, as it stood, did not constitute valid execution on behalf of the true vendor — it was, in substance, an incomplete or defective execution, incapable by itself of conveying title. When the Administrator added these words on 01.07.86, he was not making a mere clerical correction to an already-complete document; he was completing the very act of execution that alone could make the deed operative as a conveyance executed on behalf of the Governor. This addition therefore constitutes, for the purposes of Section 24, a fresh and distinct act of execution.

Applying Section 24 to Compute the Limitation Period

Since the deed involved several persons — the vendee, the attesting witnesses, and the Administrator (acting, ultimately, on behalf of the Governor) — executing at different points in time, and since the Administrator's act of completing his execution by adding the necessary words of representative capacity occurred only on 01.07.86, it is this later date that must be treated as the date from which the four-month period prescribed under Section 23 begins to run, by direct application of Section 24. Reckoned from 01.07.86, the deed would need to be presented for registration by 01.11.86; on the facts as narrated, nothing suggests presentation occurred outside this window when measured from the correct starting point. The Sub-Registrar's error lies in treating 14.02.85 — the date of the Administrator's original, but incomplete and non-binding, signature — as the operative date of execution, when in truth the document did not become validly and completely executed on behalf of the true vendor until the words of representative capacity were added on 01.07.86.

The Underlying Rationale — Multipartite Instruments Must Be Complete to Trigger Limitation

The reasoning that supports this conclusion flows from the broader principle that the time under Section 23 does not commence to run until the last of the executants executes the instrument in question, since a multipartite instrument cannot be said to be executed until it reflects the full and complete consensus ad idem of all parties whose execution is legally necessary to give it effect. Here, the document could not operate as a conveyance on behalf of the Governor of U.P. — the true vendor of the land — merely by the Administrator signing in his personal capacity without indicating that he did so on the Governor's behalf; that omission meant the document was not, in the eyes of the law, a completed and valid instrument of transfer by the vendor at all, until it was rectified. The rectification on 01.07.86, by supplying the missing words of representative authority, was the act that brought the document to completion as a validly executed conveyance, and it is from this date that the clock under Section 23, read with Section 24, must run.

Illustration

If a government authority's officer signs a conveyance in his personal capacity, without indicating that he does so on behalf of the government body he represents, and only later — say, several months afterward — adds the words showing that he executed the deed in his representative capacity, the document is not treated, for purposes of computing the limitation period for registration, as having been executed on the date of the officer's original signature alone. Instead, since the deed involves execution by more than one person (here, the purchaser, the witnesses, and the officer completing his signature in the correct capacity) and these executions occur at different times, Section 24 applies, and the four-month period for presentation runs from the date on which the officer's execution was rendered complete and effective — that is, from the date the representative capacity was added, not from the date of the bare, incomplete signature.

Comparative Summary