KOMIRESETTI SATYANARAYANA Vs. YEERANKI CHINNA VENKATARAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decree of the Subordinate Judge of Cocanada wherein he gave certain reliefs by way of specific relief to the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs case was that certain sums of money were due to them as debts from various people. It is not material for the purposes of our decision to know how those debts were alleged to have come into existence, what was their nature or what were the relations to the plaintiffs of the various parties to the transactions in question. The transaction was that an agreement was entered into for the sale of certain property in extinguishment of the plaintiffs claims. The agreement that was entered into by the contracting parties was this "We shall execute the sale deed for this as per your draft and give it to you registered within three months from this date" so that undoubtedly under that document it was part of the obligation of the defendants to get the deed that was in contemplation by this agreement drawn up and executed and registered. A deed was drawn up and in due course it came to the stage of registration. One of the persons who executed the agreement, the 3 defendant in this case, when the time came for registration objected to the registration of the document and the Registration authorities after an enquiry into the matter refused to order registration of the document as against the recalcitrant 3 defendant, plaintiffs case of course being throughout that she was a person against whom the deed oughtt to have been registered and that is their case here to-day and that the Registration authorities were in error in giving effect to her refusal. In these circumstances they brought this suit for specific performance of the agreement against all the parties to it. We are not really called upon to decide in this case whether this is a matter in which the contemplation of the parties was that all should sign or that the signature of what I may call the operative persons should be regarded as sufficient, it apparently being the fact that the signatures of others including the recalcitrant 3 defendant were added as if it were ex majori cautela in case they should raise objections and claims thereafter. Speaking for myself, I think that even in such a case it must most probably be held that it was the intention that they should execute for the very purpose that I have mentioned. However, in the view that we take it is unnecessary to decide the matter. And if the other view were to prevail that the signature of this person was otiose and unnecessary, then of course the plaintiffs case would fail equally because the whole agreement would be completed sufficiently to satisfy the contract and there would be nothing for the suit to operate upon. But taking it that the signature of the 3 defendant was necessary, what is the position in law?

(2.) By Section 77(1) of the Registration Act it is enacted as follows: Where the Registrar refuses to order the document to be registered, any person claiming under such document may within 30 days after the making of the order of refusal, institute in the Civil Court, within the local limits of whose original jurisdiction is situate the office in which the document is sought to be registered, a suit for a decree directingthe document to be registered in such office.

(3.) That is a statutory remedy given to a person who stands in the position that he is entitled to have a document registered by somebody else, that that somebody else has refused and the Registrar has upheld the refusal and he wants to have that compulsorily registered as against the other person. It should be observed, and I think this is a most important thing to notice about the section, that it provides a limitation of a short period of 30 days, the object no doubt being to ensure that matters of this kind should be gone into when the evidence is fresh in everybody's mind and in all human probability all of it available, whereas if left to an ordinary suit some people might be dead who could throw light on the matter and others might have let it fade from their recollection. I. should have thought that looking at the statute alone it is clear that the object of the legislature was to provide a remedy of a very short period of limitation for putting right a wrongful refusal to register, and that must be held to be the remedy and the only remedy given by law. But unfortunately the matter is covered with conflicting authority. The authorities in Madras appear to differ from the authorities in other parts of India. In a matter which is open to divergence of view my opinion is that this Court should follow its own cursus curie a unless it is of opinion that the former decisions of the Court are clearly wrong. I do not think, if it agrees with those decisions, that it ought to harass the parties with any argument before a Full Bench merely because of different views" in other Courts.