IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE, ANDHRA PRADESH AT HYDERABAD THURSDAY, THE TWENTY SECOND DAY OF JULY TWO THOUSAND AND TEN HON’BLE SRI JUSTICE G. BHAVANI PRASAD Civil Revision Petition No.748 of 2007 Between: Guntupalli Venkata Ramaiah and others .. Petitioners AND Guntupalli Purna Chandra Rao .. Respondent ORDER: The civil revision petition is directed against the order in I.A. No.701 of 2006 in O.S. No.1598 of 2005 on the file of the II Additional Junior Civil Judge, Guntur, dated 05-01-2007. In the suit for partition, the documents dated 05-03-1993, written on stamp papers of the value of Rs.10/-, which were unregistered, were sought to be tendered in evidence and the defendants claimed the same to be partition lists, which need not be registered. They claimed that they partitioned the properties long back and are in possession since long since much prior to the documents dated 05-03-1993 and even registered gift deeds were executed in respect of some properties obtained in earlier partition. The plaintiff on the other hand claimed the documents to be partition deeds and not partition lists and hence, they are liable for required stamp duty and penalty and are also compulsorily registerable. This conflict raised in I.A. No.701 of 2006 was resolved by the trial Court by the impugned order against the defendants by holding that the crucial documents dated 05-03-1993 show by their recitals that properties were partitioned by metes and bounds and were allotted to the sharers under the documents. Consequently, as the division and consequential possession were under the documents, the trial Court concluded that the documents cannot be called as partition lists and have to be considered as partition deeds. In coming to such conclusion, the trial Court referred to various precedents cited before it and found that the documents liable for stamp duty and penalty and registration, are inadmissible and shall not be marked by the defendants. The defendants challenged the said order in this revision contending that the unregistered partition lists are admissible in evidence and in any view, the documents are admissible for a collateral purpose of showing severance in status. The documents do not require registration or stamp duty and in any view the admissibility of the documents could have been decided at the time of arguments. Sri P. Vijaya Kiran, learned counsel for the revision petitioners and Sri N. Sriram Murthy, learned counsel for the respondent are heard. The point for consideration is the nature of the documents and their admissibility in evidence. Point: The copies of two documents dated 05-03-1993 show the recitals therein to be identical and the reference in the documents to the partition of the family agricultural lands with the advice of and in consultation with well-wishers and elders did not specify as to when was the advice taken, when were the consultations held and when was the partition effected to arrive at any conclusion on such partition being anterior in point of time to the documents dated 05-03-1993. The documents specify that the document schedule properties fell to the share of the family members specified therein as per the partition devolving with absolute rights including to gift and to sell. The documents further recited that the respective sharers took possession of the respective shares with absolute rights only on that day and from then they will enjoy the respective shares with absolute rights. The documents further recite that the partition need not be subjected to any changes or alterations in future and cannot be subjected to any further disputes by the sharers or persons claiming through them. The explicit language of the documents understood in their plain and grammatical sense, thus, shows that absolute rights were conveyed and possession was delivered in pursuance of the partition only under the documents. Under such circumstances, the trial Court cannot be considered to have gone wrong in concluding that the documents are partition deeds and not partition lists. The learned counsel for the revision petitioners referred to Roshan Singh v. Zile Singh[1] to impress about the distinction between partition lists and partition deeds and the Apex Court stated the essence of the matter to be whether the deed is a part of the partition transaction or contains merely an incidental recital of a previously completed transaction and it also cautioned that the use of past tense does not necessarily indicate that it is merely a recital of a past transaction. It further observed that if a document purports by itself to effect a division and embodies all the terms of bargain, it will be necessary to register it. The Apex Court also observed that even a document which must be registered and remained unregistered can be looked into for the limited purposes of establishing a severance in status. In that case, the document in question was permitted to be used for a limited and collateral purpose of showing that the subsequent division of the properties allotted was in pursuance of the original intention to divide. On the principles, thus, laid down by the Supreme Court, it is clear that the documents in question are more in the nature of being a part of the partition transaction purporting to effect a division embodying terms of partition by themselves. They are, therefore, registerable compulsorily, but due to want of registration they are admissible in evidence only for any limited and collateral purposes like probablising a severance in status. To the similar effect is the other decision relied on by the learned counsel for the revision petitioners, by a five-Judge Bench of this Court in Chinnappareddigari Pedda Muthyalareddy v. Chinnappareddigari Venkatareddy and others[2], wherein it was concluded that where the terms of a partition are incorporated in an unregistered document, the document cannot be looked into for the terms of the partition, but can be looked into for purpose of establishing a severance in status, though that severance would ultimately affect the nature of possession held by the members of the separated family. In the light of the above tests applicable to the documents in question, the two decisions relied on by Sri N. Sriram Murthy, learned counsel for the respondent in G. Sarangapani v. H. Kanakaiah (died) and others[3] and Ghulam Jeelani and others v. Ghulam Sofi and others[4] have to be understood as referring to inadmissibility of compulsorily registerable documents, obviously with reference to their inadmissibility for the purpose of proving the transaction itself and cannot be considered to be excluding the admissibility of the documents for any collateral purpose, which limited admissibility is evident from the express language of Section 49 of the Registration Act. While the two documents in question can be looked into for any purpose only on payment of required stamp duty and penalty in view of the absolute prohibition under Section 35 of Stamp Act, they can be looked into for a collateral purpose in spite of non-registration of the documents, if the stamp duty and penalty is paid. Therefore, the order in I.A.No.701 of 2006 in O.S. No.1598 of 2005 on the file of the II Additional Junior Civil Judge, Guntur, dated 05-01-2007 is set aside and it is declared that the documents dated 05-03-1993 in the nature of partition deeds are inadmissible in evidence for any purpose without payment of the requisite stamp duty and penalty and will become admissible in evidence for a collateral purpose on payment of such stamp duty and penalty though unregistered and it is for the trial Court to determine on merits in accordance with law whether the said documents are being tendered into evidence for any collateral purpose or otherwise at the stage of such tender after payment of required stamp duty and penalty. The civil revision petition is ordered accordingly without costs. _____________________ G. BHAVANI PRASAD, J Date: 22-07-2010 Svv [1] AIR 1988 Supreme Court 881 [2] AIR 1969 Andhra Pradesh 242 [3] 1995(2) ALT 617 [4] 1996(3) ALT 643