HONOURABLE SRI JUSTICE S. ASHOK KUMAR WRIT PETITION No. 11180 OF 2000 ORDER: This Writ Petition is ﬁled questioning the order dated 3-6-2000 passed in case No. B8/47/98 by the ﬁrst respondent as illegal and without jurisdiction, and, to set aside the same. Brief facts of the case are as follows: The petitioner herein is a minor, represented by his father, who purchased the land totally admeasuring Ac.12.16 guntas situated in Sy.Nos. 450 and 451 of Rajapur, Balanagar Mandal, Mahabubnagar District from Sri Mala Peda Hanumanthu and Sri Mala Anjaneyulu under a registered sale deed dated 18-11-1992. The above said two persons who are pattadars had executed sale deed and they have admitted the payment of total sale consideration amount. Possession of the said land was also delivered to the petitioner and the petitioner is in enjoyment of the said property. After purchase of the said property, the petitioner developed Horticulture with Govva, sweet lime etc., in the said land. The name of the petitioner was also mutated in the revenue records basing on the strength of the sale deed and loan was availed from Andhra Bank by mortgaging the said land after obtaining the permission from the District Court, at Mahaboobnagar as the property is in the name of the petitioner, who is a minor. As the things stood thus, one Mr.Gopal reddy, who was ex-sarpanch of the village, with a motive to grab the said land, ﬁled a petition before the District Revenue Oﬃcer, at Mahaboobnagar against Respondents 3 to 6 and some others, stating that they are the owners of the land and their names shall be mutated as pattadars in the relevant columns. On coming to know about the said proceedings, the petitioner got himself impleaded in the said proceedings and contested the same. Thereafter, respondents 3 to 6 made representations to the ﬁrst respondent stating that their uncle and one Sri Lakshma Reddy took away their father and got executed the registered sale deed in the name of the petitioner and the said transaction took place without paying any consideration, by deceiving their father, who is an illiterate and by playing fraud on him, and the cheque said to have been received by said Lakshma Reddy for Rs.10,000/- was not presented and said money was not realized. It is also stated that the extent of the land was wrongly mentioned. The ﬁrst respondent had treated the said representation as revision petition and issued notice to the petitioner, who ﬁled counter categorically denying the averments in the representation/revision petition. The ﬁrst respondent pressurized the counsel of the sixth respondent to settle the matter by paying some amount. The land in Sy.Nos. 450 and 451 is Ac.8.11 Guntas and Ac.4.05 gunts respectively, but, it is mentioned as Ac.4.05 gts and Ac.8.11 gts respectively, which is a clerical mistake. Further in the sale deed, the total extent of land admeasuring Ac.12.16 Gts in both survey numbers was sold by the father of the petitioner and uncle of respondents 3 to 6. The ﬁrst respondent by taking into consideration the said mistake and observing that no sale consideration amount was paid, allowed the revision ﬁled by the respondents 3 to 6 and directed to restore the entries made in the revenue records. Hence this Writ petition to set aside the order of the first respondent. The ﬁfth respondent ﬁled counter contending as follows: The Writ Petition had been dismissed in so far as the respondents 3 and 4 are concerned as early as on 16-9-2003 and hence the Writ Petition stood abated as against the said respondents. Inasmuch as the order impugned in the Writ Petition is the out come of the joint application ﬁled by respondents 3 to 6 and the Writ Petition stood abated as early as on 16-9-2003, the Writ Petition is liable to be dismissed on this ground alone since no application has been ﬁled seeking to set aside the abatement. Respondent No. 6 died on 20-3- 2005 and the petitioner did not bother to ﬁle a petition to bring on record his legal representatives and as such on this ground also the Writ Petition is liable to be dismissed. It is stated that one Mr. Lakshma Reddy, living in the adjacent village has been dealing in land transactions and he, in collusion with the father of the petitioner by name A. Pullaiah and another, by name, Mala Anjeneyulu, the brother of the ﬁfth respondent’s father, took his father to the Sub-Registrar oﬃce and got the signature of ﬁfth respondent’s father on the document already prepared and thus got registered the sale deed on 18-11-1992 as if his father and his brother executed a sale deed in respect of the land in Sy.Nos. 450 and 451, paid total sale consideration of Rs.31,000/-, in fact neither sale consideration was paid nor possession was delivered either before or in pursuance of the sale deed. Subsequently, coming to know of the execution of the said sale deed, his father went to said Lakshma Reddy and raised dispute with regard to the fraudulent execution of the sale deed and requested him to get the sale deed cancelled. Instead, the said Lakshma Reddy gave a cheque for Rs.10,000/- dated 15-12-1992 drawn on Sangameshwara Grameena Bank, Rajapoor, with a letter to the bank to pay the said amount. The said Lakshma Reddy further promised to settle the dispute within a short time and therefore, his father did not encash the said cheque expecting settlement of the dispute. The respondents continued to be in possession of the said land in spite of the registered sale deed. Since the said Lakshma Reddy did not settle the issue, notice dated 7-1-1993 was got issued on 7-1-1993 by the ﬁfth respondent through his Advocate to the petitioner mentioning about the said fraudulent execution of sale deed dated 18-11-1992 and requested for cancellation of the said sale deed. In the said notice, they have speciﬁcally stated about non- payment of sale consideration and non delivery of possession. The petitioner did not send any reply to the said notice and also did not get the lands mutated on her name up to the year 1997. In fact when an application was ﬁled by the petitioner for mutation of her name in the revenue records, the respondents ﬁled objections for the said mutation in the revenue records and also on the ground that they are in still possession of the said lands. Because of the objections, several MROs kept the matter pending without passing any orders and ultimately one MRO, without issuing any notice to the respondents, directed mutation of the name of the petitioner in pursuance of the registered sale deed. After mutation, the petitioner’s father interfered with the possession of the respondents 3 to 6, who have resisted the same and did not allow the petitioner to occupy the land and, therefore, the petitioner made a complaint to the police against the respondents. The entries in ROR shows that the respondents are continuing in possession of the said land. The respondents made several representations to various authorities including the Chief Minister complaining about the atrocities committed by the petitioner and her father. The application before the ﬁrst respondent under Section 9 of the Records of Rights Act to set aside the entries ordered by the MRO was enquired into and after giving full opportunity to the petitioner, the ﬁrst respondent by order dated 3-6- 2000 set aside the ROR entries made by the MRO and restored the entries on the name of the ﬁfth respondent’s father. Heard the learned Counsel appearing on either side. The learned Counsel for the petitioner would mainly contend that once sale deed is registered under Section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act 1882, the title passes to the purchaser, and, therefore, cannot be summoned to set aside the sale deed, that too, by a revenue authority. On the other hand, it is submitted by the learned Counsel for the respondents that inasmuch as the document is not supported by the sale consideration and extents in the documents are not tallying with the records, the Joint Collector rightly ordered for restoration of entries in ROR to the original position prior to registration. In the impugned order dated 5-6-2000, the Joint Collector of Mahaboobnagar District having found that the sale is not supported by consideration, the extents shown in the document are not tallying with the records, the corrections of extents made are not attested by competent authority and the transfer of registry carried in the ROR is based on the document No. 1939/92 is found illegal, ordered for restoration of the entries in ROR to the original position prior to registration. The extents of land in Sy.Nos. 450 and 451 shown in the document No. 1939/1992 were found wrongly mentioned and therefore, rectiﬁed the mistake in the document and also entries made in ROR. The said corrections in the document were not attested by the competent authority, i.e. Registrar. For this simple reason, it cannot be said that the document is invalid. The total extent of land which was sold tallies and the Survey Numbers also tallies. If at all there is any dispute with regard to the extent of the lands, it is for the Civil Court to decide. As far as the identiﬁcation of the properties are concerned, the boundaries of the lands in question are correctly mentioned. This Court in the case of Irruvuru Ramachandra Reddy @ Chandraiah Vs Koppala Bhushanam { 2008(2) ALT 36) held that once boundaries are correctly mentioned, errors in description of the property or wrong mentioning of survey numbers is not fatal. Therefore, the description of the property with regard to the boundaries will prevail, that too, when the executants were not left with any land in Sy.Nos. 450 and 451 of Rajapur village. As regards the contention that sale consideration was not paid, it is to be seen that the registered sale continue to be valid and the only remedy available to the executants is to recover the unpaid consideration or can claim a lien over the property sold. The same was the view taken by this Court in the case of Badugu Venkata Durga Rao Vs. Surneni Lakshmi {2001(1) ALD 86}, Wherein it was observed as follows: “ In Dip Narain Singh Vs. Nageswar Prasad, ILR 52 ALL. 338 (FB), a Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court held that once a document transferring immovable property has been registered, the transaction passes out of the domain of mere contract into one of conveyance, and the completed transaction would be governed by the Provisions of the Transfer of Property Act. The above extracted observations in the above two decisions were approved by the Supreme court in State of Kerala Vs. Cochin Chemical Reﬁndieres Limited, AIR 1968 Sc 1361. In Shaik Osman Vs. Union of India, 1980 (1) An.W.R. 105, at 109, after considering the decisions of various High Courts and the Supreme Court, Punnayya, J. (As he then was) held that merely because sale price was not paid as per the terms of contract, the vendor cannot say that title has not passed to the purchaser, and that ownership stll subsists with him, and that the purchaser is entitled to claim ownership of the property from the date when sale was completed and is entitled to seek possession also, and that the vendor is not entitled to contend that the purchaser is not entitled to sue for possession on the ground that the sale consideration was not paid to him. In view of the said position of law, it is not necessary to go into the question whether consideration, as mentioned in Exs. B1 and B2 was in fact paid or not to the deceased, since payment of consideration mentioned in Exs. B1 and B2 to the deceased can have no bearing on the transfer of title to the vendee after Exs. B1 and B2 are registered. If consideration as mentioned in Exs. B1 and B2 was not in fact paid, the remedy of the deceased was to sue for recovery of the unpaid sale consideration by claiming a change over the property sold because after registration the title in the property covered by the sale deed would stand transferred to the purchaser, even if the consideration mentioned therein is not paid to the vendor.” The deﬁnition of sale contained in Section 54 indicates that in order to constitute a sale, there must be transfer of ownership from one person to another, i.e. all rights and interests in the properties which are possessed by that person are transferred by him to another person. Even if the whole of the price is not paid, but the document is executed and thereafter registered, if the property is of the value of more than Rs.100/- the sale would be complete, the transaction of sale will take eﬀect and the title would pass under that transaction. The same is also view of the Apex Court in the case of Vidhyadhar Vs. Manikrao { (1999) 3 SCC 573} wherein it was held as follows: “ The deﬁnition( Sale as deﬁned U/S 54 of the TP Act, 1882) indicates that in order to constitute a sale, there must be a transfer of ownership from one person to another, i.e. transfer of all rights and interests in the properties which are possessed by that person are transferred by him to another person. The transferor cannot retain any part of his interest or right in that property or else it would not be a sale. The deﬁnition further says that the transfer of ownership has to be for a ‘price paid or promised or part paid and part promised’. Price thus constitutes an essential ingredient of the transaction of sale. The words “ price paid or promised or part-paid and part-promised’ indicate that actual payment of the whole of the price at the time of the execution of sale deed is not a sine qua non to the completion of the sale. Even if the whole of the price is not paid, but the document is executed and thereafter registered, if the property is of the value of more than Rs.100, the sale would be complete” In view of the settled position of law, as mentioned supra, if the sale deed is not supported by the sale consideration or balance sale consideration is not paid, or if there is any dispute with regard to the extents of the land, it is for the Civil Court to decide the same, and, the same is not for the Revenue authorities to decide whether the sale is valid or not. In the above circumstances, the impugned order dated 3-6-2000 passed in Case No.B8/47/98 by the ﬁrst respondent-Joint Collector, Mahaboobnagar District is set aside. The Writ Petition is accordingly allowed. No order as to costs. ----------------------------------------- JUSTICE S. ASHOK KUMAR Date : --10—2008. Msnr