Registration of documents creating or extinguishing rights in immovable property are given great importance so much that every inch of Indian territory from North to South and East to West falls under the office of a Sub-Registrar appointed by the respective State Government/Union Territory for the purpose of registering documents. The offices of sub-registrars are also being increasingly digitized and made people friendly. A very practical question that people often face is what will be the consequence if a document, say a lease deed, compulsorily registrable, is not registered by the executants. The following rough and ready rules of thumb provide instant guidance on the topical issue.

  1. The Registration Act, 1908 mandates that every lease deed of the duration of more than one year is compulsorily registrable.
  1. If the lease is not so registered, it will not affect the immovable property comprised in the deed nor will it be accepted as evidence of any transaction affecting leased property. This means that the lease deed would be void in the eyes of law and no court would uphold the rights of the landlord or tenant on the unregistered lease deed.
  1. However, this does not mean that the lease is useless in a court of law for all purposes.  It can be used as evidence for a collateral purpose. For instance, if a tenant under an unregistered lease takes a defence that the landlord’s suit is not maintainable because the lease is not registered, the court may look into the terms of the unregistered lease to determine the nature of the tenant’s possession. From the terms of the unregistered lease, the court may conclude that the relation of landlord and tenant indeed subsisted between the parties. In such a case the tenancy would be from month to month, terminable by a written notice of 15 days in case of residential lease and six months in case of a commercial lease. Similarly there is no bar to the unregistered lease being allowed as evidence for any purpose other than to show the existence of a lease.

@ Rakesh Matwa, Advocate