G. Kalawathi Bai (Died) per LRs. v. G. Shashikala (Died) per LRs. and Others
Background
The dispute concerned an alleged 1990 General Power of Attorney executed by a couple, Ranveer Singh and Gyanu Bai, in favour of their tenant, G. Rajender Kumar, and three subsequent registered sale deeds that Rajender Kumar then executed in favour of his own wife using that power of attorney. Ranveer Singh denied ever having executed the power of attorney at all, and the case raised questions about whether the power of attorney and the resulting sale deeds had been properly authenticated and registered under the Registration Act, 1908.
Decision Breakdown
Rather than deciding the appeal on its facts, the two-judge Bench focused on a pure legal question: whether a power-of-attorney holder who signs a sale deed on behalf of a principal becomes the "executant" of that deed himself (as an earlier decision, Rajni Tandon v. Dulal Ranjan Ghosh Dastidar, (2009) 14 SCC 782, had held), or remains merely an "agent" who must independently satisfy the Registration Act's authentication and identity-verification requirements. The Bench disagreed with the Rajni Tandon view, reasoning that a power-of-attorney holder who merely signs on the principal's behalf does not become the executant in his own right and must still meet the Act's authentication requirements. Because this directly conflicted with binding precedent, the Bench could not simply overrule it. It instead directed the Registry to place the matter before the Chief Justice for listing before a larger Bench to authoritatively resolve the question, leaving the present appeals themselves undecided on merits for now.
Lesson Learnt
When a Supreme Court Bench disagrees with an earlier binding precedent, the proper course is to refer the legal question to a larger Bench rather than overrule it directly; practically, this case flags that the rules on authenticating power-of-attorney-based property sale deeds remain unsettled and buyers/sellers relying on such arrangements should expect extra scrutiny until a larger Bench decides the point.