The Madras High Court on Thursday sought the State government’s response to a plea to declare as unconstitutional the newly introduced Sections 22B and 77A of the Registration Act of 1908 empowering Sub-Registrars to refuse to register forged documents and the District Registrars as well as the Inspector General of Registration to cancel registered documents in certain cases.
A Division Bench of Justices G.R. Swaminathan and N. Mala ordered notice returnable by four weeks on a public interest litigation petition filed by advocate T. Arockia Dass of Chennai. The petitioner contended that the two newly introduced provisions to the Central enactment by way of a State amendment would lead to harassment of even genuine people by the bureaucrats and politicians.
The petitioner also contended that the newly introduced provisions amount to encroaching upon the powers of the judiciary. He said the right to determine the validity of a document was a judicial function which could be performed better only by the civil courts and not the District Registrars. “Providing unbridled power to the bureaucrats would pave way for recurring casualty of justice at the hands of those people,” his affidavit read.
“The registration department is riddled with corruption. To get a posting in a prime location, the Sub-Registrars are spending lots of money. In order to recover the money spent by them, they extract money even from the parties involved in genuine and valid transactions. The amended provisions will now open up the materialistic avenue for the registering officials for making a fast buck,” the litigant feared.
Every year, thousand of crores of rupees are earned by the public exchequer through stamp duty. “Taking advantage of the two newly introduced provisions, the local politicians and corrupt officials would threaten and blackmail the parties involved in transaction of high value properties and indulge in extortion,” he said and urged the court to declare the two provisions as unconstitutional.
