The Court upheld the statutory authority of Notaries appointed under the Notaries Act, 1952, to attest documents intended to take effect outside India, and held that the notification issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, restricting Notaries from attesting such documents, was invalid.

( 1 ) PETITIONERS have filed this writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India with a prayer to issue writ, older in the nature of mandamus, certiorari or any other writ to quash the notification dated 31. 1. 1992, issued by the Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, to the effect that only those documents will be given to the Ministry of External Affairs for authentication, which have been attested by the officers, specifically designated to do so by the State Governments.

( 2 ) BRIEFLY stated, the facts leading to the filing of this writ petition are as under:

( 3 ) OM Prakash Jain, petitioner No. 1 was appointed as a Notary by the Government of India and was registered as such under Section 5 of the Notaries Act, 1952 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act" ). P. Y. Bhagat, petitioner No. 2 was appointed as a Notary by Delhi Administration on 5. 12. 1986 and their appoints are valid till date. The names of the Notaries are entered in the register and they can be removed on the grounds mentioned in Section 10 of the Act The ads, which can be performs by the Notaries have been specified in Section 8 of the Act, which include attestation and authentication of instruments intended to take effect in any country or place outside India in such form and language as may conform to the law of the place where such deed is entitled to operate and also to translate and verify the translation of any document from one language into another.

( 4 ) IT has been claimed by the petitioners that by virtue of their appointments as Notaries, they have been attesting documents which were to be submitted in foreign countries besides the documents, to be submitted to different authorities in India. They had been charging fee, as prescribed under Rule 10 of the Notary Rules, 1956 (hereinafter referred to as "the Rules"), which have been framed by the Government in exercise of powers under Section 15 of the Act.

( 5 ) IT is claimed that by issuing the aforesaid letter/notification, the respondents have violated the fundamental rights of the petitioners to continue their profession and to practice as a notary under the Act and the petitioners have been deprived of their functions and thus, it has effected even their means of livelihood and thus this petition.

( 6 ) RESPONDENTS No. 1 to 3 have opposed this writ petition and a counter affidavit has been filed by Y. P. Singh, respondent No. 2. It has inter-alia been pleaded that the Ministry of External Affairs has been receiving complaints that a large number of fake certificates were being presented to the Ministry duly authenticated by the Notaries Public since there were as many as 14000 notaries public all over India and the Ministry of External Affairs is not in a position to maintain their specimen signatures. It was also claimed that the Consular Section is too under staffed and unable to take the responsibility of maintaining upto date specimen signatures of thousands of notary public. It was also claimed that most of the Indian citizens in need of authentication of documents were those seeking jobs and therefore, fraud has serious implication on job prospects of such persons and that the documents received in the morning were being authenticated and returned to the applicants the same day. It has also been claimed that the Ministry of External Affairs was under no obligation to grant authentication merely because a document has been notarised and even otherwise, it was impossible to maintain signatures of about 14,000 notaries public. Further averments made in the counter have been that some notary public have falsely been claiming that they have been recognized by the Ministry of External Affairs while there was no such recognition by the Ministry of External Affairs and that there have been fake authentications which have come to the notice of the Government of India. It has, thus, been pleaded that the impugned order has been issued keeping in view the con