An unregistered document can be relied upon for collateral purposes, even if it is inadmissible as evidence due to non-registration, as per Section 49 of the Registration Act.

Viney Mittal, J.

1. The plaintiffs are the petitioners before this Court. They are aggrieved against an order dated November 8, 2006 passed by the Trial Judge, whereby an application filed by the plaintiffs under Section 49 of the Registration Act (hereinafter referred to as 'Act') has been dismissed and a document in question dated February 9,2002 has not been permitted to be led in evidence even for collateral purposes.

The plaintiffs had filed a suit for declaration and permanent injunction claiming absolute ownership of the suit property by alleging that the property in question had fallen to their exclusive share on a family partition. For the aforesaid purposes, the plaintiffs have relied upon an affidavit dated February 9, 2002.

2. The suit is being contested by the defendant No. 1-Dambarlal. During the course of evidence of the plaintiffs, the plaintiffs wanted to produce the aforesaid affidavit on record, which was objected by the defendant No. 1 on the ground that the said document was a relinquishment deed. It was claimed that the said affidavit was compulsorily required to be registered and having not been so registered, could not be admissible in evidence. Vide order dated December 21, 2004, the Trial Court ruled in favour of the defendant and held that the document required compulsory registration and having not been so registered, the same was not admissible. The order dated December 21, 2004 has never been challenged by the plaintiffs and as such has attained finality before the Trial Court.

3. A subsequent application dated October 13, 2006 was filed by the plaintiffs under Section 49 of the Act. In the aforesaid application, it was claimed by them that even if the document in question was compulsorily registrable, and as such, being not registered, could not be admissible in evidence, the same can always be looked into for collateral purposes.

4. This application was contested by defendant No. 1. Reliance was placed upon the order dated December 21,2004 and it was claimed that in view of the earlier order passed by the Trial Court, the application filed by the plaintiffs was not maintainable.

Vide order dated November 8, 2006, the Trial Court has dismissed the aforesaid application filed by the plaintiffs.

5. It is in these circumstances, that the plaintiffs are before this Court.

6. I have heard Shri A.K. Sethi, learned Senior Counsel for the petitioners and Shri B.I. Mehta, learned Counsel for respondent No. 1 and with their assistance have also gone through the record of the case.

7. The factum of the passing of the earlier order dated December 21, 2004 is not in dispute. It is also not in dispute that said order had not been challenged by the plaintiffs and as such had attained finality in the proceedings before the Trial Court. The only question remains to be considered by this Court is as to whether once a document, which requires a compulsory registration and had not been so registered and has been held to be inadmissible on account of non-registration, whether such a document cannot be even relied upon by the party for collateral purposes.

8. In my considered view, the answer to the aforesaid question has to be in the affirmative. Even if, on account of non-registration of a document, the document is held to be inadmissible in evidence, the said document can always be looked into for collateral purposes by the Court and for the aforesaid collateral purposes, a party can always rely upon such an unregistered document. The provisions of Section 49 of the Act always come into play, once it is found that under Section 17 of the Act, a document requiring compulsory registration has not been registered and therefore, under Section 17(2) of the Act cannot be held to be admissible. This aspect of the matter has been clearly lost sight of by the learned Trial Court. The learned Trial Court has fallen into a clear error, when it has observed that allowing the application filed by the plaintiffs would actually amount