Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has issued guidelines to the registration department on registration of the property documents and refunding stamp duty in case of refusal. The court directed the sub- registrars to take a decision expeditiously on the files submitted, preferably within one week.
Justice N.V. Shravan Kumar issued the guidelines in the backdrop of incidents that the registration authorities are urging the applicants to get fresh court orders for registering their property, especially ones that were in dispute earlier. The judge also came to know that in several cases, registration authorities refused documents to register agricultural land, even in case of a small extent of land if restricted for registration by a court order or by way of notification.
The court viewed that the authorities without making a detailed enquiry are entering the entire extent of the survey numbers into prohibited list, and the pattadars are not notified about the same.
In case of urban properties concerning multiple flats/units, sometimes the entire property is placed in prohibitory properties.
Guidelines…
· Whenever anyone approaches the authorities to register documents, the officer shall as expeditiously as possible, preferably within a week, register the document or pass refusal order, and communicate the same to the concerned parties.
· Registration authorities shall not refuse documents orally; it must be followed by a written refusal order.
· In case documents are refused registration, the procedure for refund of stamp duty and registration charges should be simplified. Parties should clearly understand the refund policy before making payment
· The registration authority has to issue fresh memo/circular or instructions to sub-registrars not to insist on court orders for registration of documents on the same ground —government orders/notifications/circulars/memos/proceedings or orders passed by the authorities, which have been set aside or modified by a court order and also when there is no pending appeal and in matters which have attained finality.
· The authorities must ensure that a watch register, general diary (GD Book), entry book or register is maintained at every sub-registrar’s office to make entries of the parties with details, so as to avoid interference, tampering and misrepresentation.
