Write short note on effect of non-registration of documents requiring compulsory registration under Registration Act, 1908.

Effect of Non-Registration of Documents Requiring Compulsory Registration

Where a document that Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908 makes compulsorily registrable is left unregistered, Section 49 visits it with a threefold disability: the document cannot affect the immovable property comprised in it, cannot confer any power to adopt, and cannot be received in evidence to prove the transaction it records — subject only to two limited exceptions under the proviso.

Section 49 — The Governing Provision

Section 49 declares that no document required by Section 17, or by the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, to be registered shall — (a) affect any immovable property comprised therein, (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. Being a penal and disabling provision, it has been consistently construed strictly by the courts, since it deprives a document of rights and effects that would otherwise flow from it.

No effect on the property. An unregistered sale deed, mortgage deed, or lease exceeding a year does not transfer or create any title, right, or interest — the transferor remains legally the owner despite execution of the document. In Sadashiv Prasad Singh v. Harender Singh, the Supreme Court held that even a notarised but unregistered sale deed cannot operate to pass title in immovable property; notarisation is no substitute for registration where the law compels it.

No power to adopt. An unregistered authority to adopt, though required to be registered under Section 17(3), confers no valid power, and an adoption made under it cannot be validated merely because the adoption in fact occurred.

Inadmissibility in evidence. The unregistered document cannot be looked at by a court even to prove the transaction it purports to record, rendering it, for that purpose, as good as non-existent.

Illustration

If A executes an unregistered deed purporting to sell his house to B, and B takes possession relying on it, B cannot succeed in a suit for declaration of title, since the deed, being compulsorily registrable and unregistered, is incapable under Section 49(a) of affecting the property, and equally inadmissible under Section 49(c) to prove the sale.

The Proviso — Two Exceptions

The proviso to Section 49 permits an unregistered document to be received as evidence of a contract in a suit for specific performance under the Specific Relief Act, and as evidence of any collateral transaction not itself requiring a registered instrument. Thus, an unregistered agreement of sale, though incapable of transferring title, may still found a suit for specific performance — a position applied in Manish v. Anil Kumar, though the Allahabad High Court in Vijay Kumar Sharma v. Devesh Behari Saxena held this benefit unavailable where the State's own amendment to Section 49 had withdrawn it. Similarly, an unregistered lease, though it cannot prove the term granted, may be examined to establish collateral facts such as the nature of possession or the rate of rent, as courts have consistently recognised.

Priority Under Section 50

Section 50 further provides that a duly registered document takes effect against every unregistered document relating to the same property regardless of the relative dates of execution — meaning a person who fails to register a compulsorily registrable document may be wholly defeated by a subsequently executed but registered document dealing with the same property, since the unregistered instrument confers no title capable of competing with it, a principle traceable to Waman v. Dhondiba.