The Sub Registrar's role is administrative and limited to ensuring compliance with statutory formalities, and he does not have the authority to adjudicate or evaluate the rights of parties to make a disposition or transfer.

JUDGMENT

Yashwant Varma, J. - Although learned counsels representing the respondents are present, none has appeared for the petitioner when the matter was called.

2. This writ petition has been preferred challenging the order of 2 March, 2020 passed by the District Magistrate, West acting as the Appellate Authority, under the Registration Act, 1908 [the Act]. In terms of that order the Appellate Authority has set aside the decision taken by the Sub Registrar concerned in refusing to register a sale deed which had come to be duly presented for registration by respondent Nos. 4 and 5. The case of the petitioner in the writ petition is that he is the bona fide purchaser of plot No. 197-C comprised in khasra No. 852 situated in village Tihar, New Delhi. It is asserted that the aforesaid plot was in the joint ownership of the Inder Gopal and Girdhar Gopal. Girdhar Gopal is stated to have executed a registered Will bequeathing his share in that property to the sixth respondent in terms of a sale deed dated 4 July, 2019. It is in terms of that bequest that the sixth respondent is stated to have executed a sale deed in favour of the petitioner. It is further averred that the fifth respondent thereafter executed another sale deed in favour of respondent No. 4 on 11 July 2019 with respect to the same property. It is this instrument which forms the subject matter of dispute. Although the appellate authority records that the said instrument came to be duly registered on 14 July, 2019, that recordal of fact is disputed by learned counsel for respondents 5 and 6 who asserts that the Sub Registrar stayed his hands upon the receipt of representations made by the respondent No. 5 and before the act of registration was complete.

3. The vendor, respondent No. 5 herein is stated to have made two representations dated 19 and 23 July 2019 bringing to the notice of the Sub Registrar that the sale deed which had been executed and presented for registration was liable to be ignored since she came to execute the same on account of incorrect information provided by respondent No. 4 and on account of misrepresentation. The Sub Registrar by his order of 24 July 2019 proceeded to pass an order refusing registration of that instrument. Aggrieved by the aforesaid order, an appeal came to be preferred by respondent No. 4. It is that appeal, which has come to be allowed by the District Magistrate by the impugned order of 2 March, 2020.

4. The District Magistrate has in some detail noticed the contents of the representations which were made by respondent No. 5 before the Sub Registrar and which appeared to have been taken into consideration by that authority in support of its decision to refuse registration. The order records that the fifth respondent moved the Sub Registrar doubting her competence to make the conveyance in favour of the fourth respondent in light of an oral family settlement which is stated to have been arrived at as a consequence of which she was unsure whether she retained the right or authority to execute the sale deed in favour of respondent No. 4. It was in the aforesaid backdrop that she asserted that the same had come to be executed on account of various misrepresentations made by respondent No. 4 and therefore sought to resile from the transaction.

5. The District Magistrate taking into consideration the statutory provisions as engrafted in Sections 34 and 35 of the Act, has come to conclude that the Sub Registrar clearly erred in refusing to register the instrument which had been validly presented. It also took note of the decision of the Supreme Court in Satya Pal Anand Vs. State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors. (2016) 10 SCC 767 to conclude that disputes like those voiced and addressed by the fifth respondent cannot form subject matter of adjudication or consideration of the Sub Registrar and ultimately it is for parties to settle their rights before the appropriate forum. It has accordingly framed a direction commanding the Sub Registrar to co