The acceptance of an unregistered document by a purchaser may relieve the vendor from the obligation to tender a registered document, and the purchaser must pursue compulsory registration to secure their rights under the law.

Srinivasa Aiyangar, J.

1. This is a curious case. The plaintiff was the purchaser of a certain piece of property under a document which was duly signed by the defendant vendor and delivered to the plaintiff purchaser. It was omitted to be registered. The case of the plaintiff-appellant is that she was making demands upon the defendant for the registration of the document but that he was putting off. The present suit was instituted on the ground that the plaintiff was entitled, neglecting altogether the sale-deed that had already been executed, to a decree for specific performance against the defendant to carry out the original contract of sale. Of course for the purpose of performing a contract to sell the property the vendor has to perform his contract by duly executing a registered deed of sale. Until such a document is executed no transfer of property is effected and no performance of the contract by the vendor.

2. With regard to this there has been, curiously enough, two series of decisions both in this Court and elsewhere, one beginning from the case of Nagappa v. Devil [1891] 14 Mad. 55, and another beginning from the case of Venkataswami v. Krishtayya [1893] 16 Mad. 341. In the former series of cases it was held that until and unless a document is registered it cannot be said that the purchaser has had the contract in his favour properly performed and that, therefore, if for any reason whatsoever the document is not registered he is entitled to claim and have specific performance of the contract by direction against the defendant to execute and register such a conveyance. No doubt there is a certain amount of reasonableness in that view and it is apparently that reasonableness which has been the prompting cause of so many decisions to such effect both in the Allahabad and Calcutta. High Courts also. There is, however, a recent decision of this Court, the judgment in Satyanarayana v. Venkata Rao A.I.R. 1926 Mad. 530). In that case the Chief Justice has referred to all the previous cases on the subject and come to the conclusion that the doctrine that even though a vendor of property may execute a conveyance if the conveyance should fail to be registered the purchaser of. property has still a claim for specific performance is a vicious doctrine. The learned Chief Justice has examined all the previous cases on the subject and as I read the judgment he based the con-delusion on the well-established principle that the gist of the Code is its completeness. No doubt, as justly observed by the learned vakil Mr. Rajagopala Aiyangar for the appellant, that case was -one in which the plaintiff, having failed to obtain the registration of the document and being bound under the provisions of the Registration Act within the period of one month allowed by law to appeal to the Registrar and take the necessary -steps for securing the registration of the documents failed to do so. But what the learned Chief Justice has refused to recognize is a right in every purchaser of property to get specific performance of the contract whenever for any reason the instrument of conveyance is omitted to be registered. I feel bound by the decision in that case. The principle of the decision in that case is clearly applicable to the present case before me because, even though there were no proceedings taken at all under the Registration Act by the present plaintiff-appellant, still I regard the judgment in that case as a denial of the right of the plaintiff in similar circumstances to get specific performance without proving more.

3. It seems to me, however, that the matter can be regarded in a somewhat different light and it is possible in that view almost to reconcile the two series of decisions. Every vendor of property is undoubtedly bound to do all that is necessary to perfect the title of the purchaser, that it to say, to execute and register a proper conveyance if so required. A purchaser of property is not bound to accept an unregistered do