‘Stop pointing out deficiencies in piece-meals’
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Mar 27: Expressing serious concern over Sub-Registrars pointing out deficiencies in piece-meals and putting citizens to avoidable hardships, the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh has directed the Registering Officers to refer to the checklist while processing documents for registration and adopt citizen-centric approach in discharging their statutory duties.
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The Bench of Justice Wasim Sadiq Nargal passed these directions in a petition filed by one Santosha Devi of Palmar in Kishtwar district, who was aggrieved of the acts of omission and commission on the part of the respondents in declining to register the Will Deed executed by the petitioner.
The petitioner presented the Will Deed duly complete in all the respect before Sub-Registrar (ACR) Kishtwar way back in April 2023 for its registration. However, the Sub-Registrar without any valid reason and justifiable ground didn’t register the document on the ground that he was unable to read the Urdu document.
Accordingly, the petitioner preferred an appeal before the Registrar (ADC) Kishtwar, who in the month of May 2023 passed an order directing registration of the Will Deed. However, on being approached by some relatives of the petitioner the document could not be registered and feeling aggrieved the woman approached the High Court challenging the inaction on the part of the respondents.
On May 29, 2023, High Court directed the Registrar to register the Will Deed or assign it to any other competent authority for registration within a period of 10 days.
When the petition came up for hearing yesterday, the respondents submitted that in pursuance to the order passed by the court on May 29, 2023, the Sub-Registrar Chatroo has registered the Will Deed of the petitioner.
On this, counsel for the petitioner, while admitting that grievance projected in the petition has been redressed, raised concern with regard to lackadaisical approach of the appropriate authority in registering the document well in time.
After hearing both the sides, Justice Wasim Sadiq Nargal observed, “Sub Registrars have a specific mandate under the Registration Act, 1908 and provisions of revenue laws and they are under an obligation to discharge their statutory duties diligently with a citizen-centric approach to realize the objective of transparent document registration services, a harbinger of Digital Governance across UT of J&K”.
“It has come to fore that during scrutiny of documents presented for registration, some of the Sub-Registrars used to point out deficiencies in piece-meals or seek additional documents thereby putting the citizens to avoidable hardships, which practice besides being time consuming and unsupportive of good governance, has the potential to create doubts about the online document registration through National Generic Document Registration System (NGDRS)”, High Court said.
Pointing towards the guidelines and checklist of documents issued by the Government, the High Court directed the Registering Officers to refer to the checklist while processing documents for registration adopting a citizen-centric approach while discharging their statutory duties in terms of the provisions of the Registration Act, 1908 and the relevant laws/rules/standing orders/ instructions issued by the Government from time to time.
“Role of Registering Officer is administrative in nature and does not fall within the ambit of quasi-judicial authority. As per the mandate of the Registration Act and Rules formed there-under, the role of the Registering Officer is limited to the extent of registering the document if the same is accompanied by supporting documents and he/she is expected to evaluate the title or irregularity in the document as such”, High Court said, adding “the examination to be done by him/her is incidental to ascertain that there is no violation of the provisions of Registration Act and the Registration Officer cannot decide as to whether a document presented for registration is executed by person having title as mentioned in the instrument”.
Accordingly, High Court directed the Registering Officers to follow the guidelines laid down in the Government Order while processing the documents for registration with a view to discharge their statutory duties in terms of the provisions of the Registration Act and the relevant rules/standing orders.
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