‘Amnesty From Penalty Under Stamp Act Does Not Create Right Of Registration Of Instrument Beyond Limitation Period’: Bombay High Court
The Bombay Excessive Courtroom has held that fee of stamp obligation beneath the Maharashtra Stamp Responsibility Amnesty Scheme, 2023, can’t override the statutory cut-off dates prescribed beneath the Registration Act, 1908, for presentation of paperwork. It dismissed a petition difficult the refusal to register a 1987 Improvement-cum-Sale Settlement regardless of fee of stamp obligation beneath the Amnesty Scheme.
Justice Madhav J. Jamdar was listening to a writ petition filed by Atul Initiatives India Pvt. Ltd., which had sought to direct the Sub-Registrar to register an settlement dated October 4, 1987. The corporate had participated within the 2023 Amnesty Scheme and paid ₹3.2 lakh in stamp obligation, anticipating that the settlement, though executed almost 36 years earlier, could be registered. The Sub-Registrar refused registration by letter dated February 13, 2024, citing Circulars dated December 22, 2011, and November 30, 2013, which clarified that paperwork outdoors the statutory registration interval can’t be accepted until re-executed and duly stamped once more.
The petitioner argued that, as per the Amnesty Scheme, even the devices which haven’t been introduced for registration, although executed between 1st January 1980 to thirty first December 2020, got the advantage of the Amnesty Scheme. He contended {that a} reputable expectation in most people is created that after fee of the stamp obligation beneath the Amnesty Scheme, the instrument shall be registered with none additional demand for the stamp obligation.
Rejecting the plea, the Courtroom held:
“…as per the Amnesty Scheme, in reality, the promise which has been given by the State Authorities is that if the correct stamp obligation as per the Amnesty Scheme is deposited inside the time restrict supplied within the Amnesty Scheme, then by exercising energy beneath Part 9, the State Authorities might cut back, remit or compound prospectively or retrospectively, in the entire or any a part of the duties or penalty on the devices.”
The Courtroom emphasised that the aim of the Amnesty Scheme is in consonance with the article of the Stamp Act, i.e., to safe income assortment, whereas the Registration Act serves to keep up a file of paperwork of title in public curiosity and forestall fraud to the general public. It mentioned that there isn’t any energy, both with the officer or the Excessive Courtroom, to increase the time interval supplied for presentation of a doc for registration, with some restricted exceptions.
“…the Excessive Courtroom can’t in its Writ Jurisdiction prolong the statutory interval beneath the Registration Act for presentation of a doc for registration. Nonetheless, the one restricted exception is the place the delay in presenting the doc was not attributable to the Petitioner on account of some impossibility or by advantage of an act of Authority,” the courtroom noticed.
Accordingly, the Courtroom dismissed the writ petition.
Case Title: Atul Initiatives India Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Maharashtra & Ors. [Writ Petition (L) No. 12995 of 2024]
