C BHARATHI Vs. DISTRICT REGISTRAR AND COLLECTOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) SINCE common questions of fact and law arise in both these revisions, they are being disposed of by this common order.

(2.) REVISION petitioners in these revisions are the donees of the property under the two gift deeds dated 24. 5. 2004 executed by one Guthi Pedda Papaiah in respect of an immovable property covered by sheds. The property covered by the two gift deeds was valued at Rs. 6,00,000/- and rs. 8,00,000/- respectively and those gift deeds were presented for registration. The registering Officer, having felt that the valuation of the property covered by the two gift deeds is not the real market value, referred the case to the Collector under section 47-A of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 (the Act) for determination of the market value of the property covered by the gift deeds and kept the registration of those documents pending, and had after issuing notice in Form - II to the donees and donor, and after inspecting the property covered by the gift deeds fixed the market value of the property and directed payment of the balance stamp duty payable, as per the market value determined by him. Aggrieved thereby, revision petitioners preferred appeals to the Additional Senior civil Judge, Nandyal, who, by the orders impugned in these revisions, dismissed those appeals. Hence, these revisions.

(3.) THE main contention of the learned counsel for petitioners is that since the petitioners, who, as a condition precedent ought to deposit the entire stamp duty, payable on the gift deeds as determined by the Collector for preferring of the appeals, did not make such deposits - those appeals are non-est in law, and so the appellate authority ought to have rejected them and should not have entertained the appeals and passed orders dismissing them on merits, and for that reason only the orders under revision are unsustainable, and since the revision petitioners are ready to deposit the amount due to be deposited by them, they may be permitted to deposit those amounts and the cases may be remitted to the appellate authority for fresh disposal according to law. His next contention is that in any event inasmuch as the collector did not follow the procedure prescribed under Section 47-A of the Act and Rules 5 and 7 of the Andhra Pradesh stamp (Prevention of Under-Valuation of instruments) Rules, 1975 (the Rules), and had based his decision solely on the basic value register, which is not admissible in evidence, the orders under revision are unsustainable and for that reason also the cases have to be remitted to the primary authority with a direction to fix the market value by following the procedure prescribed by Rules 5 and 7 of the Rules, and relied on m/s. Lakshmiratan Engineering Works ltd. v. Assistant Commissioner Sales Tax, air 1968 SC 488, Shyam Kishore v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, AIR 1992 sc 2279, R. Srikant v. Government of andhra Pradesh, 2002 Suppl. (2) ALD 755 (DB), Mohd. Abdul Azeem Zakee and others v. Government of A. P. , 2001 (6)ALD 394 (FB), Alladi Venkateswarlu v. Warangal Municipal Corporation, warangal, 2002 (1) ALD 861, Municipal corporation of Hyderabad v. Tahera begum, 1974 ALT 316, Ponnavolu Sasidar v. Sub-Registrar, 1992 (1) ALT 49 and the meaning of the word 'prefer' in the Law lexicon, in support of the contentions raised by him.