1. One Ranglal Dhannalal was a business agent of Must. Ganga Bai, the defendant in this suit. On the 8th April, 1909 Ranglal, purporting to act on behalf of his principal, executed a document, Exhibit P-I, which is a sale of a I-anna 4-pies share in a certain Ginning Factory for Rs. 4,000 to the plaintiff. The deed recites that it is executed to carry out a contract for the above sale made by the defendant's husband before he died, and that he had already received the price in full. This deed was not presented for registration till the 21st July, 1909, when only 17 days remained of the original period of 4 months allowed for that purpose. The document was presented by the plaintiff, and he foresaw that the attendance of the executant was not likely to be secured before the period expired. He, therefore, applied to the District Registrar, before whom presentation was made, for an extension of time under Section 34 of the Indian Registration Act, as applied to Berar, but that application was refused, and on the 9th August, 1909, no executant having appeared in the meantime, the Registrar made an order refusing to register the deed. Thereupon on the 24th August, 1909, the present suit was filed under S. 77 of the said enactment, to compel registration. As the plaint was originally drawn, the defendants impleaded were Must. Ganga Bai, the constructive executant, and Ranglal, the actual executant of the deed, but the name of Ranglal was subsequently struck out under circumstances which have not been disclosed. The first Court went into the question of Ranglal's authority to bind the defendant by execution of the deed, and gave the plaintiff a decree against the defendant Ganga Bai to compel registration. On appeal by Ganga Bai the learned District Judge held that in the present suit the plaintiff had no cause of action against Ganga Bai as she had not executed the deed, and reversing the decree of the first Court the Judge dismissed the suit. The plaintiff has, therefore, made this second appeal.
2. I am of opinion that the appeal must fail.
3. I think that the phrase “person executing the document” and its derivatives as used in Sections 32, 34, 35, 58 and 73 of the Indian Registration Act, refer to the person who actually signs or marks the document in token of execution, whether for himself or on behalf of some other person; and that he is the proper defendant in a suit brought to compel registration under Section 77 of the Registration Act. A Registering Officer has to satisfy himself that the document was executed by the person by whom it purports to have been signed, not constructively but actually. Neither the Registrar, nor a Court proceeding under S. 77 aforesaid, has any concern with the legal effect of the document, e.g, when the executant is an agent professing to execute for a principal, whether he has authority to execute. Registration is designed to guard against fraud by obtaining a contemporaneous publication and an unimpeachable record of each document, and for that purpose the Registering Officer has only to be satisfied that a certain person, not being a minor or lunatic, admits having signed or marked the deed which purports to have been executed by him. S. 35 of the above enactment is very clear on that point.
4. It is hardly necessary to say that, where a deed is executed by an agent for a principal, and the same agent appears and presents the deed or admits execution before the Registering Officer, that is not a case of presentation under S. 32(c) of the Act, or appearance and admission by agent under S. 34(I) and 35(b). It is a presentation, appearance or admission by the actual executant himself. In the present case, for the purposes of all procedure under the Registration Act, and, therefore, for the purposes of this suit, Ranglal was the executant of Exhibit P-I. The Registering Officer had to satisfy himself that Ranglal, being sui juris and compos mentis, had executed the deed: and though Ranglal could make such admission personally or by representative, assign, or duly authorized agent, it was his admission alone that could give jurisdiction to the Registering Officer to register the deed: and, therefore, he is the only person against whom a suit would lie under Section 77 of the Registration Act. It would make no difference to his legal power to voluntarily admit execution, or to his legal liability to be compelled to do so by suit, that his execution was unauthorized, or that, before registration, he had ceased to be an agent of the principal on whose behalf he had professed to act in executing the document. A person who executes in favour of another any document which is compulsorily registrable, is bound ipso facto to assist in having that document registered, wholly irrespective of its legal effect upon himself or any other person. For the purposes of this suit, and of the registration which it is brought to compel, Ranglal was, and Ganga Bai was not, the executant of the document.
5. Therefore, the suit has rightly been dismissed.
6. The appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.
P.N/R.K
7. Appeal dismissed.