This Memorandum of Family Settlement is drawn up and signed at Ludhiana, in the State of Punjab, on 2 April 2026.
Stamp. This Memorandum is engrossed on e-Stamp Certificate No. IN-PB12345678901234X dated 12 August 2026 for Rs 1,00,000, issued by Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited in the name of Sardar Vikramjit Singh.
The parties to this Memorandum are:
- Sardar Vikramjit Singh, aged 58 years, son of the late Sardar Harnam Singh, resident of House No. 142, Phase 2, Model Town, Ludhiana 141002, PAN ABCPS1234K
- Smt. Manjit Kaur Bhatia, aged 55 years, daughter of the late Sardar Harnam Singh, resident of House No. 1206, Sector 40-B, Chandigarh 160036, PAN ABCPB5678L
- Sardar Amarjit Singh, aged 51 years, son of the late Sardar Harnam Singh, resident of 88 Guru Nanak Nagar, Jalandhar 144004, PAN ABCPS9012M
Each of the persons named above is referred to in this Memorandum as a "Party" and all of them together as the "Parties". They are all members of the family of the late Sardar Harnam Singh of Model Town, Ludhiana (the "Family").
A. Antecedent title. The properties described in Schedule A were acquired by the late Sardar Harnam Singh during his lifetime and were held by him at the time of his death on 3 August 2019. He died intestate at Ludhiana, leaving him surviving the three Parties as his only Class I heirs, his wife having predeceased him on 11 January 2016. Mutation of inheritance No. 4471 was sanctioned in respect of Items 1 and 2 by the Circle Revenue Officer, Tehsil Ludhiana West, on 14 February 2020, entering the three Parties as owners in equal one-third shares as tenants-in-common.
B. The dispute. Differences arose between the Parties from about March 2021 as to the division of the properties. Party 1 claimed that the Model Town house should come to him alone because he had lived in it with the deceased and had met the cost of its repair; Party 2 claimed an equal one-third share in all the properties and disputed that any repair expenditure had been incurred; Party 3 claimed that the agricultural land at Village Jhande, which he had cultivated since 2004, should come to him. Notices were exchanged between the Parties through counsel at Ludhiana in June 2021 and the differences remained unresolved.
The Parties confirm that the differences described above were genuine, that each of them was asserting a claim honestly and in good faith, and that the arrangement recorded in this Memorandum was arrived at in order to bring those differences to an end and to preserve the peace and standing of the Family.
C. The arrangement. On 1 April 2026, at a family meeting held at the ancestral house at House No. 142, Phase 2, Model Town, Ludhiana, in the presence and with the mediation of Sardar Girdhari Singh, the maternal uncle of the Parties, the Parties, acting voluntarily and with full knowledge of their respective claims, arrived at an arrangement for the settlement of those differences on the terms recorded in this Memorandum.
D. The arrangement has been acted upon. Possession of Item 1 was delivered to Party 1 on 20 April 2023 and he has been in exclusive possession since. Possession of Item 2 was delivered to Party 3 on the same date and he has cultivated the land in his own name since; the khasra girdawari for the kharif 2023 season records him as the cultivator. Possession of Item 3 was delivered to Party 2 on 25 April 2023. The acquisition of Items 1 and 2 was reported to the Halqa Patwari on 2 May 2023 and mutations Nos. 5188 and 5189 were sanctioned by the Circle Revenue Officer, Tehsil Ludhiana West, on 19 September 2023. An application for transfer of ownership of Item 3 was filed with the Estate Officer, U.T., Chandigarh on 8 May 2023 and the transfer was recorded on 12 July 2023. An application for permission to transfer Item 4 was filed at the estate branch of the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority, PUDA Bhawan, Sector 62, S.A.S. Nagar on 15 May 2023 and permission issued on 21 August 2023. The electricity connection for Item 1 was transferred to the name of Party 1 by the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited on 14 July 2023, and that for Item 3 to the name of Party 2 by Chandigarh Power Distribution Limited on 21 July 2023. The Parties have since dealt with the properties allotted to them without objection from one another.
E. Purpose of this Memorandum. The Parties now reduce the arrangement to writing so that there is a clear and dated record of it for their own information and for the information of any person who may need to know what was agreed and what was done — including the Sub-Registrar, the Halqa Patwari and the Circle Revenue Officer of the tehsil, the estate branch of any development authority or improvement trust that allotted a site described in Schedule A, the Estate Officer, U.T., Chandigarh, the Chandigarh Housing Board, the municipal corporation, municipal council or nagar panchayat concerned, the electricity distribution licensee, a bank, a company, a depository or a court.
3.1 This Memorandum is a record. It records an arrangement that was arrived at on 1 April 2026 and that has already been given effect to. It does not itself create, declare, assign, limit or extinguish any right, title or interest in any property.
3.2 Every right recognised in this Memorandum arises out of the arrangement itself and out of the antecedent title that each Party already had in the property, and not out of this Memorandum. The Parties are not transferring anything to one another by signing it; they are recording a division that has already taken place among persons who were already entitled.
3.3 The Parties acknowledge that whether a document requires registration is decided by what its words actually do and not by what the document is called, and that a document which itself creates, declares, assigns, limits or extinguishes any right, title or interest in immovable property of the value of one hundred rupees or upwards is compulsorily registrable under section 17(1)(b) of the Registration Act, 1908, and is inadmissible in evidence under section 49 of that Act if it is not registered. This Memorandum is not intended to be, and must not be read as, such a document.
3.4 The Parties further acknowledge that a mutation sanctioned by a Circle Revenue Officer under sections 34 to 36 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887, a permission or re-transfer recorded by a development authority or improvement trust in Punjab under section 43(7) of the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995, and a transfer of ownership or lease rights recorded by the Estate Officer, U.T., Chandigarh on the basis of a family settlement, are each entries of administrative and fiscal record. None of those offices decides title, and no such entry adds to or takes away from what this Memorandum records.
4.1 The Parties are governed by Hindu law, which by section 2 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 applies also to Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains. They acknowledge that under section 6 of that Act, as substituted with effect from 9 September 2005, the daughter of a coparcener is a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as a son, with the same rights and the same liabilities in the coparcenary property; and that, as held in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma, (2020) 9 SCC 1, that right arises by birth and does not depend upon the father having been alive on 9 September 2005. The shares recorded in this Memorandum were arrived at on that footing.
4.2 Every member of the Family who has, or who claims, any right, title or interest that is affected by the arrangement recorded in this Memorandum is a Party to it. No such person has been left out, and no Party is aware of any other person who has or claims any such right.
5.1 Each Party is of full age and of sound mind, and has signed this Memorandum personally or through a constituted attorney holding a specific power of attorney authorising the attorney to sign it.
5.2 No person who is a minor, and no person who is unable by reason of unsoundness of mind or any other incapacity to manage his or her own affairs, has any right, title or interest that is affected by the arrangement recorded in this Memorandum.
5.3 Each Party entered into the arrangement voluntarily, in good faith, and without coercion, undue influence, fraud or misrepresentation by any other Party, and each Party had a full and fair opportunity to take independent legal advice before doing so.
5.4 Each Party had, before agreeing to the arrangement, full knowledge of the properties described in Schedule A and of the claims of the other Parties, and no Party withheld from any other Party any fact material to the arrangement.
5.5 Signature through an attorney. The following Party or Parties signed this Memorandum through a constituted attorney, whose authority to sign it subsisted on the date of signing:
Party 3, Sardar Amarjit Singh, has signed through his constituted attorney Sardar Gurpreet Singh, son of Sardar Mohan Singh, resident of 88 Guru Nanak Nagar, Jalandhar 144004, under a special power of attorney dated 2 February 2024 executed before the Consulate General of India at Dubai, adjudicated and stamped at Jalandhar on 26 February 2024 and notarised at Jalandhar on the same day.