अपनी जानकारी भरिए

INSTRUCTION TO ADVOCATE FOR A THIRTY-YEAR TITLE SEARCH AND BUYER'S DUE DILIGENCE REPORT

(Punjab checklist at Schedule A — Chandigarh checklist at Schedule B)

To

__________, Advocate
Enrolment No. __________
__________
Telephone: __________
E-mail: __________

Date: __________

Place: __________

SUBJECT: Instructions to investigate the title to __________ situated at __________, in __________, offered for sale by __________, to examine the transactions concerning it from __________ down to the date of your report and in any event over not less than the thirty years immediately preceding it, and to furnish a written certificate of title

Dear Sir / Madam,

PART I — THE CLIENT, THE PROPERTY AND THE SELLER

1. The Client. I, __________, __________ __________, resident of __________, telephone __________ (together the Client, whether one person or more), am the intending purchaser of the property described in Schedule C, and I instruct you on the terms set out below. Where more than one of us is named above, you are engaged by each of us and you owe your duty to each of us.

2. The Property. __________ situated at __________, in __________, admeasuring __________ (the Property), described more fully in Schedule C at the end of these instructions.

3. Revenue particulars, where the Property lies in the State of Punjab. Where the Property lies in the State of Punjab and any of these particulars is missing or is stated wrongly, you are to take the correct particulars from the fard and to tell me in your report what was corrected and how you satisfied yourself of it. Where the Property lies in the State of Punjab and has no revenue record at all — a site in the abadi deh or within the lal lakir, or a property inside municipal limits — say so in terms and run item A.6 of Schedule A instead of leaving this clause unanswered.

4. Estate particulars, where the Property lies in the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Where the Property lies in the Union Territory of Chandigarh and the tenure stated above turns out to be wrong, that fact alone is to be reported to me at once and before the rest of the work is done, because almost everything else in Schedule B turns on it.

5. The Seller. The Property is offered to me by __________, __________ __________, resident of __________ (together the Seller, whether one person or more). You are not to assume that the Seller is the owner. Whether the Seller can convey what the Seller is offering is the whole question I am asking you. Where more than one person is named above, tell me whether they hold the Property jointly or in defined shares, and whether every person on the ownership side of the record has been produced to me.

PART II — THE TRANSACTION

6. What is proposed. I propose to purchase the whole of the Property from the Seller by a registered sale deed. If no agreement to sell has yet been signed, I do not intend to sign one until I have your report, and you are to advise me if you think that sequence should change.

7. Funding. I will tell you at once if the funding arrangement changes in a way that affects the timetable in clause 18.

8. The completion I am working to. I am working to complete the purchase on or before __________. Nothing in that date is to be read as a reason to shorten the searches. If the searches cannot honestly be completed by then, say so and I will move the date.

PART III — THE INSTRUCTION

9. What I am asking you to do. You are instructed to investigate the title to the Property, to examine every transaction affecting it over the period beginning __________ and ending on the date of your report, and in any event over not less than the thirty years immediately preceding your report, and to furnish me a written certificate of title in the form set out in Annexure 2, together with a due diligence report answering, item by item, the checklist that applies to the Property. If the date I have given above is less than thirty years before your report, treat this instruction as requiring the full thirty years and tell me in the report that I mis-stated the date. If the chain of title runs through a consolidation, a partition, an inheritance or a court decree sitting just outside that window, go back far enough to reach the transaction that begins the chain, and say in the report how far back you went and why.

10. Which checklist applies. Schedule A is the checklist for a property in the State of Punjab. Schedule B is the checklist for a property in the Union Territory of Chandigarh. The two overlap very little, because the two places keep title in entirely different places: in Punjab the record is the jamabandi and the mutation register kept by the revenue agency, and in Chandigarh, for a property in the sectors, there is no jamabandi and no fard at all — the allotment file held by the Estate Officer is the record. The Property in this case lies in __________, so that is the schedule you are to complete in full. Three qualifications. First, the searches at the office of the Sub-Registrar and the searches for litigation and for a charge on the Property have to be run whichever schedule governs. Second, if the Property lies in a village or periphery area of the Union Territory of Chandigarh — Manimajra, or a lal dora or phirni area — then revenue records, a fard and a Naib Tehsildar's report do exist for it and the revenue searches in Schedule A bear on it as well; say so in your report and run both. Third, and the mirror image of the second, a great deal of property in the State of Punjab has no revenue record either: a house inside municipal limits, a site in the abadi deh or within the lal lakir, and a plot in a licensed colony on land that has been urbanised all rest on registered deeds and the municipal register rather than on the jamabandi. Item A.6 is the track for those, and where it governs, items A.1 to A.5 are to be answered "not applicable" with the reason given.

11. The standard you are to work to. The thirty-year period is not a convention I have invented. Section 3(2)(a) of the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 1995 requires a promoter who develops a colony or constructs a building of apartments to disclose the nature of his title to the land, "such title to the land having been duly certified by an attorney-at-law or an advocate of not less than seven years standing, after he has examined the transactions concerning it in the previous thirty years", and section 18(1)(a) casts the same duty on a promoter entering into a transaction for the transfer of a property. Section 18(1)(b) requires full and true disclosure of all encumbrances, including any right, title, interest or claim of any party in or over the property. Section 6(1)(c)(i) requires that certificate to be attached to the agreement for sale. That is the standard the legislature has fixed for the person selling, and it is the standard I am asking you to apply for the person buying. You have told me that your standing at the Bar is __________, and Annexure 1 asks you to confirm that, and to confirm separately that you are an advocate of not less than seven years' standing within the meaning of those sections. If you cannot sign the second of those confirmations, do not sign the first either: tell me, and I will instruct somebody who can.

12. Where ten years is asked for instead, and what may already be published. If the Property is a plot or a flat in a real estate project that requires registration, two ten-year requirements bear on it and both of them work in my favour. Rule 3(1)(e) of the Punjab State Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017, published in the Punjab Government Gazette (Extraordinary) of 8 June 2017, requires the promoter applying to register the project to furnish the details of encumbrances or a "non encumbrance certificate through an advocate having experience of atleast ten years from the revenue authority not below the rank of Tehshildar, as the case may be". Rule 15(1), which lists what the Authority itself must publish on its website for every registered project, requires under head E(ii) both a "land title search report from an advocate having experience of at least ten years" and that same non-encumbrance certificate. So a document of the kind I am paying you for may already be on the public record. Take it off the Authority's website, tell me its date, the period it covers, who signed it and whether you agree with it, and tell me whether your own standing meets that ten-year figure.

13. What the record does and does not prove. In the State of Punjab you are to treat the jamabandi for what section 44 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 makes it — an entry "presumed to be true until the contrary is proved" — and not as a register of title; section 45 sends an aggrieved owner to a declaratory suit, and paragraph 7.30 of the Punjab Land Records Manual bars the use of a mutation to correct an entry already incorporated in a jamabandi. In the Union Territory of Chandigarh you are to treat the Estate Officer's file as the record, and to keep in mind section 3(3) of the Capital of Punjab (Development and Regulation) Act, 1952, under which the site continues to belong to the Central Government until the entire consideration money together with interest and every other amount due has been paid — so an allottee still paying instalments cannot give me good title, whatever the deed says. The same trap exists on the Punjab side for authority land: under section 43(6) of the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995 the land or building continues to belong to the Authority until every rupee of consideration, interest and other dues is paid, and under section 43(7) the allottee cannot transfer without the Authority's previous permission.

14. Powers of attorney. If any link in the chain is a general power of attorney sale, an agreement to sell with possession, or a will said to operate as a transfer, you are to report it as a defect and not as a link. A power of attorney is not an instrument of transfer, and the Supreme Court said so in Suraj Lamp and Industries Private Limited (2) v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656. Tell me what would have to be done to cure it, who would have to sign, and whether those people can be found.

15. Matters I already know of. Any matter I am already aware of that might affect the title is set out in this clause, and there is nothing else that I know of. Anything you find that is not set out above is new to me and is to be reported whether or not I have asked about it.

16. Additional instructions. Where I have additional instructions for you they are set out in this clause; where none appears below, I have none at this stage and the work is that described in clause 9 and Part IV alone. Nothing in this clause reduces the scope of clause 9.

PART IV — WHAT THE REPORT MUST CONTAIN

17. Your report is to contain, as separate and separately headed parts:

(a) the devolution of title, set out as a table, one row for each transaction in the search period, giving the date, the nature of the instrument or the mutation, the parties, the registration or mutation number, the office where it is recorded, and the document you actually inspected — original, certified copy, portal print or photocopy, named as such;

(b) a list of every document you called for and did not get, with the reason, because the gaps in a search matter more than the findings;

(c) the encumbrances, charges, attachments, acquisition proceedings and litigation you found, and the searches you ran to find them, each with the date on which it was run;

(d) the defects in title, graded as those that make the purchase unsafe, those that can be cured before completion, and those a buyer may reasonably accept with an indemnity;

(e) for each curable defect, exactly what has to be produced or executed, by whom, and in what order;

(f) the completed checklist at Schedule A or Schedule B, answered item by item, with "not applicable" said in terms wherever it is the answer;

(g) the list of original documents the Seller must hand over at completion, and the list of documents to be filed after completion; and

(h) the certificate of title in the form of Annexure 2, signed and dated.

PART V — HOW YOU ARE TO WORK

18. Time. I need your report by __________. Where a record has to come from a public office and the office has its own notified time limit, you are to apply for it at once rather than at the end, and to tell me the date of the application and the acknowledgement number, so that the delay is the office's and is on the record.

19. Fee. Your professional fee is __________, payable __________. This is your fee for the work described in clause 9 and Part IV, and it is not to be revised because the search turns out to be longer than expected, unless you tell me before you do the extra work and I agree in writing.

20. Expenses. Copying fees, search fees, certified copy charges, portal charges, travel within the district and the cost of a public notice are to be paid by me in addition, against receipts. You are not to pay any amount to any person for expediting a public record, and no such payment will be reimbursed.

21. Independence and conflict. You confirm by Annexure 1 that you do not act, and have not acted, for the Seller or for any person in the chain of title in relation to the Property, that you hold no interest in the Property, and that you will tell me at once if that changes. If you are already on the panel of the lender named in clause 7, say so before you accept. If a conflict comes to light after you have begun — and a title search is exactly the exercise that turns one up — you are to stop work at once, tell me in writing what the conflict is, hand over the papers under clause 23, and charge me only for the work actually done to that point.

22. Ending the engagement. Either of us may end this engagement at any time by written notice, and neither of us has to give a reason. If I end it, I will pay you for the work actually done to the date of the notice against an itemised account showing the searches run, the applications made and the expenses incurred, and anything I have already paid beyond that is to be refunded to me within fifteen days. If you end it, the same account is to be rendered, and you are also to tell me plainly what remains undone, so that whoever takes the work up is not searching the same registers twice. Ending the engagement releases neither of us from clause 23 or clause 24.

23. The papers, and whose they are. The certified copies, fards, jamabandi and mutation extracts, portal prints, receipts, applications and acknowledgement numbers obtained at my expense are mine. On completion of the work, or on this engagement ending for any reason, you are to hand them to me within fifteen days together with your working note of what was searched, where, and on what date. You may keep a copy for your own record and for as long as your professional obligations require. An unpaid fee is not a reason to withhold the acknowledgement numbers from me, because an application I cannot identify is an application I cannot appeal.

24. Confidentiality. Everything I give you and everything you find is confidential to me and is not to be disclosed to the Seller, to any broker or to any other person without my written instruction, save where a public office requires it in order to release a record. This clause survives the ending of the engagement.

25. If you find the purchase unsafe. Say so plainly, in the first paragraph of the report, in a sentence a person who is not a lawyer will understand. Do not bury it in a qualification at the end. I would far rather lose the transaction than the price of it.

26. This is not a valuation and not tax advice. You are not asked to value the Property, to advise on capital gains, or to advise on the deduction of tax at source on the purchase price. Tell me if you think I need separate advice on any of those.

27. Disputes about this engagement. Any dispute between you and me arising out of this engagement is a civil matter, and I ask that it be dealt with by the civil courts having jurisdiction at __________, unless we agree otherwise in writing. This clause concerns the engagement only and says nothing about where a dispute over the Property itself would be tried.

PART VI — THE CLIENT'S UNDERTAKINGS

28. I undertake:

(a) to give you every document in my possession relating to the Property, including anything that tells against the purchase;

(b) to pass on to you, unedited, every document the Seller gives me, and to tell you what the Seller has refused to give;

(c) not to pay any further sum to the Seller, and not to sign any agreement, deed or receipt, until I have your report — and if I do so against your advice, to record that I did so against your advice;

(d) not to circulate your report or your certificate to any person other than my lender and my own advisers without your written consent;

(e) to tell you at once of any change in the identity of the Seller, in the extent of the Property or in the price; and

(f) to pay your fee and your approved expenses as agreed in clauses 19 and 20, and to settle any account rendered under clause 22 if this engagement ends before the work is finished.

PART VII — SIGNATURE

29. Please confirm your acceptance of these instructions by signing and returning Annexure 1.

Yours faithfully,

___________________________
__________
Client / Intending purchaser
Telephone: __________

(Where there are more than two purchasers, add a signature line for each, with that person's own parentage and address. Every purchaser named in the sale deed should be a party to these instructions, because a report addressed to one of two buyers protects one of them.)

SCHEDULE A — THE PUNJAB CHECKLIST

(Complete this Schedule where the Property lies in the State of Punjab, and also where the Property lies in a village or periphery area of the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Answer every item. Where an item does not apply, write "not applicable" and say why. One warning before you begin: items A.1 to A.5 are the revenue record, and a great deal of Punjab property has none. A house inside municipal limits, a site in the abadi deh or within the lal lakir, and a plot in a licensed colony on land that has been urbanised are title that runs on registered deeds and the municipal register instead. Item A.6 is the track for those.)

A.1 The fard jamabandi. Obtain a certified copy of the current jamabandi and of the jamabandi for every quinquennium falling in the search period. Detailed jamabandis are prepared once every five years, and mutations on which final orders were passed up to 15 June, or a later date approved by the Director, Land Records, go into the new jamabandi (Punjab Land Records Manual paragraph 7.56). A digitally signed copy of the fard can be requested on jamabandi.punjab.gov.in, and a certified copy can be had over the counter — the counter is the Fard Kendra at the tehsil or sub-tehsil, and since the decision of April 2025 to move that work to the Sewa Kendras it may now be the Sewa Kendra instead. Ask at both. The patwari's manual copying scale under Land Revenue Rule 71 and paragraph 3.48 of the Manual is Rs 20 per page of the original, Rs 20 for a fard haqiat irrespective of the number of khewats, and Rs 20 per four fields for a tracing of the field map; the fee for a computerised nakal under Rule 71-B is fixed by the notification of 28 May 2009 and is not published in the manuals, so ask the counter what it is and put the figure in your report.

A.2 The mutation (intkal) chain. Take every mutation entered against the khewat in the search period, with the order of the Circle Revenue Officer sanctioning or rejecting it. Mutations can be viewed by number on jamabandi.punjab.gov.in. Read the order, not the entry. Check that the mutation fee was recovered at attestation from the person in whose favour the entry was made, as paragraph 7.33 of the Manual and section 38(2) of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 require, and note that the Revenue Department's published table puts the mutation fee at Rs 600. Note also that a person who fails to report an acquisition within three months is liable under section 39 to a fine of up to five times the fee — an unreported acquisition in the chain is a signal, not a technicality.

A.3 The roznamcha and the rapat. Obtain the roznamcha waqiati entries corresponding to each mutation and to any report of possession, court order or loan. A mutation with no rapat behind it deserves an explanation.

A.4 The shajra and the tatima. Obtain the shajra kishtwar and any tatima shajra prepared on a partition or a sale of part, and satisfy yourself that the khasra numbers in the deed, in the jamabandi and on the map are the same land. A tracing costs Rs 20 per four fields on the paragraph 3.48 scale.

A.5 The khasra girdawari. Take the crop inspection record for the last twelve harvests. It tells you who is in cultivation, which is not always who is on the ownership side of the record. Note any entry of a tenant, and remember that the Punjab Tenancy Act, 1887 distinguishes occupancy tenants from tenants-at-will, whose entries populate the khatauni. A recorded tenant matters twice over: once for possession, and once for pre-emption under item A.13.

A.6 Where there is no jamabandi: urban and abadi deh property in the State of Punjab. Establish first whether the Property falls inside a revenue estate at all. Where it lies within the municipal limits of a corporation, council or nagar panchayat, or inside the abadi deh or the lal lakir of a village, there is commonly no khewat, no khasra number and no mutation by the Tehsildar for it, and items A.1 to A.5 have nothing to search. Say so in terms rather than leaving them blank, and then run the three tracks that do carry the title. First, the registered instruments at the office of the Sub-Registrar under item A.7 — the Revenue Department's own registration checklist calls for a Nakal Jamabandi as the evidence of ownership only for property outside the lal lakir, and for property inside it calls instead for the old registry or TS-1 together with a field staff report on ownership and possession, so for an abadi site the deeds and that report are frequently the only evidence of title there has ever been. Ask also whether a record of rights has been prepared for the habitation under the Punjab Abadi Deh (Record of Rights) Rules, 2021, and obtain it if it has. Second, the municipal record: the property tax or house tax register, the property identification number, the assessment history, the name in which the Property is assessed and the date that name was last changed, any transfer or name-change application on the file, and a no-dues position from the corporation or council. Third, the building record under item A.18. Where the site is a plot in a licensed colony, the licence file under item A.15 replaces the revenue record altogether. Report in terms which of those tracks the title actually rests on, because a certificate that recites a jamabandi for a property that never had one has searched the wrong register.

A.7 Registered deeds and an index search. Apply to the Sub-Registrar or Joint Sub-Registrar of the sub-district for an index search across the whole search period and for certified copies of every registered instrument affecting the Property. Registered deeds can also be viewed on jamabandi.punjab.gov.in, and slot booking and e-stamp integration run through the NGDRS Punjab portal at igrpunjab.gov.in. Under the Punjab right-to-service framework a certified copy of a registered document is a seven-day service, and registration of a deed is a one-day service; two days are added where the application is made at a Sewa Kendra, Fard Kendra or Saanjh Kendra. If the sub-district was bifurcated or the village reassigned at any point in the search period, run the search at the earlier office too — one office cannot certify another office's registers.

A.8 The Non-Encumbrance Certificate. Apply through the Non-Encumbrance Certificate Issuance System on rcms.punjab.gov.in. It is a three-day service. The certificate is only as good as the period it covers and the description it is issued against; check both against the deed.

A.9 Litigation. Run the property-under-litigation search on rcms.punjab.gov.in, and search the cause lists of the revenue courts, the civil courts of the district and the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Revenue Courts Management System carried 71,228 pending cases and an average disposal time of 437 days when its dashboard was read on 6 September 2026; a revenue matter pending against this khewat is not a matter that will resolve itself before completion.

A.10 Fard badar, sehat indraj and inconsistent khewats. Ask whether any fard badar or sehat indraj is pending or has been decided in the search period, and obtain the order. A fard badar confined to entries made while preparing the current consigned jamabandi is decided by the Circle Revenue Officer; where the correction reaches back into earlier jamabandis it is decided by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (Punjab Land Records Manual paragraph 7.29), and the parties need not be heard. An error in an inconsistent khewat may also be removable under section 42 of the East Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, 1948. A pending correction is a pending change to the very record you are certifying.

A.11 Shamlat. Check the ownership column for shamilat deh, and specifically for the entries "Jumla Malkan Wa Digar Haqdaran Arazi Hassab Rasad", "Jumla Malkan" and "Mushtarka Malkan", each of which is expressly within section 2(g) of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961. Land within that definition vests in the Panchayat under section 4; a claim of right, title or interest goes to the Collector under section 11 as substituted, with an appeal to the Commissioner within sixty days, orders are final under section 12, and the civil court is barred by section 13. Take the text of section 11 from revenue.punjab.gov.in and not from a commercial database, several of which still reproduce the 1961 contents page. Do not accept a share in such land as a saleable interest without an order.

A.12 Consolidation. Ask whether the revenue estate has been through consolidation, and whether any repartition objection, appeal under section 21(3) or 21(4), or revision under section 42 of the East Punjab Holdings Act, 1948 is pending. Check whether any part of the Property is land reserved for common purposes and vested under section 23A, which is not the Seller's to sell.

A.13 Pre-emption. This is the one right in Punjab that can undo a completed purchase in favour of somebody who was never a party to it, and it is the item a hurried search omits. The Punjab Pre-emption Act, 1913 remains in force in the State of Punjab. Section 15, as substituted by Punjab Act 10 of 1960, vested the right on a sale of agricultural land or village immovable property in the vendor's kinsfolk, in the other co-sharers and in the tenant; in Atam Prakash v. State of Haryana, decided on 27 February 1986, the Supreme Court struck down the kinsfolk clauses — "First", "Secondly" and "Thirdly" of section 15(1)(a), (b) and (c) — and the whole of section 15(2), and upheld the right of the co-sharer and of the tenant as a class by itself. What survives is therefore this, and it is what you must check. On a sale of a share out of joint land or property that is not made by all the co-sharers jointly, the right vests in the other co-sharers under section 15(1)(b) "Fourthly" and after them in the tenant. On a sale by a sole owner, and on a sale by all the co-sharers jointly, it vests in the tenant holding under the vendor the land or property sold or a part of it. For urban immovable property, section 16 vests it in the tenant alone. Section 10 bars a party to the sale from claiming it, section 9 excludes a sale by or to Government or to a local authority, and section 8(2) empowers the State Government to notify a local area, a property or a class of sales out of pre-emption altogether — so ask whether any such notification covers this land, and produce it. Limitation under section 30 of the Act is one year, running on agricultural land and village immovable property from the earlier of the attestation of the mutation by the Revenue Officer and the date the vendee takes physical possession of any part, and on urban immovable property from the date of physical possession; Article 97 of the Limitation Act, 1963 likewise gives one year. Now tell me, in terms: who every recorded co-sharer in the khewat is; whether any tenant appears in the khatauni or the girdawari; whether a right of pre-emption subsists against the sale proposed to me; when it would expire; and whether I should obtain a written relinquishment from the co-sharers before completion, or have them attest the sale deed, since a person entitled to pre-empt who attests the sale is held to have waived the right (Ghannum Ram v. Jattu Ram, AIR 1925 Lah 442).

A.14 Acquisition, reservation, land use and the controlled areas. Check with the office of the Deputy Commissioner and the concerned development authority whether any part of the Property stands notified for acquisition, falls in a road widening line, a master plan reservation or a green belt, or requires a change of land use under sections 79 to 81 of the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995 before it can be built on. Then state expressly whether the Property falls within the controlled belt around the capital under the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act, 1952 and the Periphery Control Rules, 1959, or within any other controlled area or local planning area notified under the 1995 Act. In the periphery no building may be erected or re-erected, no excavation made or extended and no means of access to a road laid out except in accordance with the notified plans and restrictions and with the previous written permission of the Deputy Commissioner under section 6, with an appeal to the Commissioner within sixty days under section 7 whose order is final; operations in the ordinary course of agriculture, unmetalled access roads to agricultural land and buildings subservient to agriculture in a village abadi are outside the control. A buyer comparing a site at Mohali, Zirakpur, Kharar or Dera Bassi against a site in the sectors needs that answer before the price is agreed and not after, because it decides both what can be built and whether the colony could ever have been licensed. Note that the same 1952 Act, as extended, controls village land outside the abadi limits in the Union Territory of Chandigarh as well, so ask the question there too.

A.15 Colony, licence and PAPRA compliance. Where the Property is a plot in a colony, obtain the promoter's licence under section 5 of the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 1995, the approved layout plan and plan of development works, the certificate of title by an advocate under section 3(2)(a), the disclosure of encumbrances under section 3(2)(b), and the agreement for sale under section 6. Section 6(1) forbids the promoter from taking any advance before a written registered agreement and caps that advance at twenty-five per cent of the sale price. Section 7 requires the agreement for sale to be presented for registration under the Registration Act, 1908 — an unregistered one is a defect, not a formality, although section 8 keeps it receivable in evidence for specific performance and for section 53A of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882. Section 15 requires the conveyance deed within three months of possession and section 16 gives a unilateral registration route with a penalty when the promoter does not execute it. Section 18(2) forbids a prospectus or advertisement that does not say where those documents may be inspected. Tell me whether the colony is licensed at all, because section 20(5), inserted by Punjab Act 11 of 2024 with effect from 5 November 2024, opened a limited registration route for areas up to 500 square yards in an unauthorised colony held under a power of attorney or an agreement to sell existing up to 31 July 2024, and whether the Property depends on that route is something I have to know before I pay.

A.16 Development authority allotments. Where the Property is a plot or flat allotted by a development authority, the allotment file is the title, and the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 1995 does not apply to it at all — section 44(1) takes a local authority or a statutory body constituted for the development of land or housing outside that Act. Obtain the allotment letter, the letter of intent and its acceptance, every instalment receipt, the no-dues position, every earlier transfer permission, the possession letter, the completion or occupation certificate and the conveyance deed if one has been executed. Check the extension fees for failure to obtain the completion or occupation certificate, which are charged half-yearly as a percentage of the allotment price and rise with each band of years, and the transfer fee that is payable where permission is sought before the conveyance deed has been issued — so getting the conveyance deed executed first can remove a levy of two and a half to five per cent from a resale. Read the affidavit the authority requires with the conveyance deed: the standard form makes the allottee and the transferee undertake to pay any final or additional price the Estate Officer may determine even after the conveyance deed has been registered, on pain of resumption, and that clause is the source of the recurring enhancement disputes. Note that the authority's own website and its printed right-to-service form have been seen to give different limits for the same service — fifteen against twenty-one working days — and that authority fees are stated to be revisable on 1 April each year, so take the fee from the current schedule and date it in your report.

A.17 Registration under the real estate regulator. Where the Property is in a project that requires registration, check the registration on the regulator's own portal and print the project page with the date on it. Rule 15(1) of the Punjab State Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017 requires the Authority to publish, for every registered project, the promoter's authenticated title deed, the details of encumbrances, a land title search report from an advocate of at least ten years' experience and a non-encumbrance certificate on the same footing, together with the proforma application form, allotment letter, agreement for sale and conveyance deed, the sanctioned layout and building plans, and the quarterly progress updates. Rule 3(1)(e) requires the encumbrance details or that non-encumbrance certificate at the registration stage. Download all of it, compare the published proforma agreement for sale against the agreement I am actually being offered, and tell me every place the two differ. Note that a development authority project may be registered with the regulator even though it is outside the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 1995.

A.18 Building approvals. Obtain the sanctioned building plan, the completion certificate under rule 14 and the occupation certificate under rule 23 of the Punjab Urban Planning and Development Building Rules, 2021 from the municipal corporation, council or authority concerned, and compare the sanctioned plan against what is standing on the site.

A.19 Charges that leave no trace in the registry. An equitable mortgage created by deposit of title deeds is not registered and will not appear in the Non-Encumbrance Certificate. Search the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India. Check the encumbrance column of the jamabandi for an agricultural loan, and ask specifically about a charge in favour of a cooperative agricultural development bank, which is commonly noted in the revenue record rather than in the registry.

A.20 The Seller's own capacity. Verify identity against photographic identity documents and the permanent account number; where the name in the record differs from the name in the identity document, ask for a one-and-same-person affidavit. Where the chain runs through an inheritance, obtain the death certificate, the mutation of inheritance and the list of legal heirs, and satisfy yourself that every heir has signed or has been provided for. Where a minor has an interest, no sale is safe without the permission of the guardian court. Where the Property is joint family property, ask who the coparceners are. Where a company, firm, trust or society is selling, take the authority to sell on the file.

A.21 Dues. Obtain the property tax position, the electricity and water dues, the panchayat or municipal dues, and the land revenue position. Dues follow the property in practice even where they do not follow it in law.

A.22 The physical Property. Ask for a demarcation. Nishandehi is a notified service with a forty-five-day limit and is applied for through the Land Demarcation System on rcms.punjab.gov.in; the fee is displayed on that system only after verification, so obtain it and report it. Visit the site. Report on possession, on any encroachment, on the access and the right of way, and on whether the Property on the ground is the Property in the fard.

A.23 Public notice. Advise me whether a public notice inviting claims should be published in a newspaper circulating in the district before completion, and if so, in which newspapers and how long before.

SCHEDULE B — THE CHANDIGARH CHECKLIST

(Complete this Schedule where the Property lies in the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Answer every item. Where an item does not apply, write "not applicable" and say why. For a property in a village or periphery area of the Union Territory, complete Schedule A as well.)

B.1 Start from the right premise. For a property in the sectors there is no jamabandi, no fard and no mutation by the Tehsildar. The allotment file held by the Estate Officer at the Town Hall Building, Sector 17-C is the title record, and title runs through the Capital of Punjab (Development and Regulation) Act, 1952 and the rules made under it. Ask the Seller to place the whole file before you, and treat a Seller who produces only a deed as a Seller who has not produced the title.

B.2 The portal record. Run Know Your Property on estateoffice.chd.gov.in and print the result with the date on it. Print the User Account Statement for the Property, and run Know Your Dues. Attach all three to your report.

B.3 The allotment. Obtain the allotment letter, the letter of intent and its acceptance, and every instalment receipt. Check against section 3(3) of the 1952 Act, under which the site continues to belong to the Central Government until the entire consideration money together with interest and every other amount due has been paid. Until that is satisfied, no good title can pass.

B.4 Tenure, and the deed that created it. Establish whether the Property is leasehold or freehold, from the allotment letter and not from what anybody says. Obtain the lease deed or the conveyance deed with its registration particulars. Under rule 11 of the Chandigarh Estate Rules, 2007 — notified by the Chandigarh Administration, Finance Department, No. 50/10/71-UTFI(5)-2007/6952 dated 7 November 2007 under sections 3 and 22 of the Act — a lease runs thirty-three years from the date of execution of the lease deed, not from allotment, renewable for two further terms of thirty-three years; a lease granted before those Rules is governed by the deed and by the rules then in force, saved by rule 20(ii).

B.5 Ground rent. For a leasehold site, check the ground rent position under rule 12 of the 2007 Rules — 2.5 per cent of the premium for the first thirty-three years, 3.75 per cent for the next thirty-three and 5 per cent for the remainder, payable without demand on the tenth day of the month following the month it falls due, with a penalty of up to one hundred per cent and recovery as arrears of land revenue under section 8 of the Act.

B.6 Dues and the No Dues Certificate. Obtain a No Dues Certificate from the Estate Office. Under the right-to-service notification of the Department of Personnel, Chandigarh Administration, No. 28/67/1-IH(9)-2026/73238 dated 30 March 2026, which superseded the notifications of 8 March 2022 and 26 June 2025, a No Dues Certificate is a fifteen-day service and time runs only from a complete application.

B.7 The transfer NOC and the unearned increase. For a leasehold site, or one allotted at concessional rates, rule 7(i) of the 2007 Rules bars transfer for fifteen years from the date of allotment, and rule 7(ii) makes one-third of the unearned increase payable to Government before the sale is registered — the unearned increase being the difference between the present value of the original premium, the premium enhanced at nine per cent per annum compounded annually from the dates it was paid, and the current market value assessed on the average auction price for the same category of site over the last three financial years, with notice and a hearing to the lessee on the assessment. Confirm whether the No Objection Certificate has been applied for and what stage it has reached. An NOC for sale, gift or transfer of lease rights is a fifty-day service under the notification of 30 March 2026, and a transfer requiring a public notice is a forty-day service of which twenty days run after the notice. Rule 7(iii) puts the addition, deletion or substitution of the name of a mother, father, spouse, son or daughter outside the definition of a transfer altogether. Advise me not to pay the balance price before the NOC is in hand.

B.8 Construction and the occupation certificate. Under rule 8 of the 2007 Rules a building must be completed within three years of delivery of possession, extendable for five further years on penalties of ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five and thirty per cent of the total consideration money for the first to the fifth year, after which no further extension is possible and the Estate Officer may proceed under section 8-A. Obtain the sanctioned building plan, the occupation certificate and any extension orders, and check whether any extension penalty is unpaid. Building plans are filed on obps.chandigarhsmartcity.in; an occupation certificate is a forty-five-day service up to two kanal and a sixty-day service above that.

B.9 Misuse. Inspect the Property and compare its actual use against the permitted use. Rule 10 of the 2007 Rules charges misuse at Rs 500 per square foot of the area under misuse per month or part of a month, payable jointly and severally by the transferee and the occupier — which means the charge follows the Property to me. Report any notice on the file. Note also the open question: rule 1(ii) confines the 2007 Rules to allotments and auctions made after 7 November 2007, most of Chandigarh predates that date, and what was done under the repealed rules of 1960 and 1973 is saved by rule 20(ii). If the allotment is older than November 2007, say so, and say what the position is on the file rather than assuming the Rs 500 rate applies.

B.10 Resumption and forfeiture. Search the file for any show cause notice or order under section 8-A of the 1952 Act. Forfeiture on resumption shall in no case exceed ten per cent of the total amount of consideration money, interest and other dues. An appeal lies to the Chief Administrator within thirty days of communication, with power to condone delay; a revision lies within thirty days to the Adviser to the Administrator for orders under the 2007 Rules under rule 18(iv), and to the Central Government for orders under sections 8 and 8-A of the Act under section 10(4). Section 19 of the Act bars the civil court, so there is no suit to fall back on. Report which ladder any pending matter is on.

B.11 Fragmentation and the 2023 position. Rule 16 of the 2007 Rules permits no fragmentation or amalgamation of a site or building; amalgamation of adjoining sites is allowed only for commercial or industrial sites with prior approval of revised plans, and fragmentation only under a notified scheme. On 10 January 2023 the Supreme Court, in Residents Welfare Association v. Union Territory of Chandigarh, Special Leave Petitions (Civil) Nos. 4950 and 5489 of 2022, prohibited the fragmentation, division, bifurcation and apartmentalisation of a residential unit in Phase-I. The Estate Officer's public notice effective 10 February 2023 permits only four things: building plans where all co-owners belong to the same family; transfers within the family by any instrument irrespective of share; wills bequeathing shares only within the family; and transfers where one hundred per cent of the property is bought by one person or by persons of the same family, whether or not the present owners are related. Change of ownership continues for all deeds registered up to 10 January 2023. For residential properties outside those categories, transfers and change of ownership stand stopped pending the decision of the Chandigarh Heritage Conservation Committee, and whether that freeze is still running has not been established. If I am buying a share rather than the whole, or if the sellers are unrelated co-owners, find out at the Estate Office counter before I pay anything further, and tell me in terms whether this transaction can complete at all.

B.12 Apartments approved before October 2007. The Chandigarh Apartment Rules, 2001 were repealed by notification dated 1 October 2007. A floor approved as an apartment under those Rules between 2001 and 2007 is saved; a floor sold as an apartment without such an approval is not. Ask for the approval, and report if it does not exist.

B.13 Registered deeds and copies. Take an index search and certified copies of every registered instrument affecting the Property at the office of the Sub-Registrar, U.T. Chandigarh, 30 Bays Building, Ground Floor, Sector 17. Presentation is between 12.00 noon and 1.00 pm and registration between 3.00 and 5.00 pm; documents are returned one week after presentation, between 9.00 and 11.00 am. The Revenue Department's own portal at revenue.chd.gov.in carries View Registered Deeds, split before and after 16 January 2025, along with the collector rates, the mutation fees and the live stamp duty calculator — print what you use, with the date.

B.14 Auto-mutation, and why the pack must be right on the day. Since 2025 the change of ownership is triggered automatically: on registration the deed and its data pass digitally from the Sub-Registrar to the Estate Office portal, the transferee is sent a message, and there is no separate mutation application. Preliminary scrutiny by the branch clerk is completed within two hours for a leasehold case with a valid NOC and four hours for a freehold case. The consequence for me is that the affidavit-cum-indemnity pack has to be complete and correct at the counter on the day of registration; there is no later filing in which to repair it. Settle the contents of that pack with the Estate Office before the date is fixed.

B.15 Housing Board flats. If the Property is a Chandigarh Housing Board flat, this is a different landlord with its own machinery under regulation 16 of the Chandigarh Housing Board (Allotment, Management and Sale of Tenements) Regulations, 1979. Check that the five-year lock-in from the date of physical possession has expired — the General Self Financing Housing Scheme, Sector 63 is the exception, where transfer within the lock-in is allowed on payment of the specified fees — that no conveyance deed has already been executed, that all outstanding dues are paid and that there is no title dispute. The allottee and the purchaser apply jointly. The Board's NOC for transfer of lease rights is a twenty-working-day service and change of ownership on a sale, transfer or gift deed is also twenty working days. Ask specifically about unauthorised construction: the Board's need-based change policies were notified on 23 March 2010, 7 July 2015, 18 February 2016, 15 February 2019 and 3 January 2023, and a projection or balcony in front of a duplex flat with pillars below was permitted under the first three and treated as a violation under the last two. Tell me which policy this flat was altered under.

B.16 Change of use and paying guest accommodation. Where the Property is used, or is to be used, otherwise than for the permitted purpose, check rule 9 of the 2007 Rules and whether a relaxation has been granted. Paying guest accommodation carries its own conditions — the owner or the family must reside in the house, the house must be not less than ten marla, there must be a minimum of fifty square feet of usable area for each paying guest and one water closet for every five persons, a guest register intimated to the police, no unauthorised construction after the completion certificate, and no kitchen beyond the approved plan. Permission for paying guest accommodation is a forty-day service.

B.17 Mortgage and charge. Permission to mortgage is a thirty-five-day Estate Office service; check whether one has been granted and whether it has been redeemed. Search the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India. Where a bank holds the originals, obtain the bank's written statement of what it holds and what is outstanding, and its no-objection.

B.18 Litigation. Search the Estate Office file for appeals and revisions before the Chief Administrator and the Adviser to the Administrator, the records of the civil courts at Chandigarh so far as they are not barred by section 19 of the Act, and the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

B.19 Documents executed outside India. Any document prepared or executed outside India and used in an Estate Office transaction must first be embossed by the Office of the Finance Department, Chandigarh Administration. This appears on every Estate Office checklist and it catches a seller living abroad with dull regularity. Check the power of attorney before, not after, the date of registration is fixed.

B.20 Names, not persons. Report the designation of the officer holding each charge, and do not rely on the name of an incumbent — the published sources name different holders of the same post in different years.

SCHEDULE C — DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPERTY

__________

Area: __________

Situated at: __________, in __________.

Boundaries and any further particulars are to be verified by you against the record and corrected in your report.

ANNEXURE 1 — ADVOCATE'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTANCE OF INSTRUCTIONS

To

__________
__________

Date: ____________________

I, __________, Advocate, Enrolment No. __________, of __________, acknowledge receipt of your instructions dated __________ in respect of __________ situated at __________, in __________, and accept them on the terms set out in them.

I confirm:

1. that my standing at the Bar is __________;

1. that I am accordingly an advocate of not less than seven years' standing within the meaning of section 3(2)(a) and section 18(1)(a) of the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 1995; and that where the Property is a plot or an apartment in a real estate project requiring registration I have told you in writing whether I have the ten years' experience which rule 3(1)(e) and rule 15(1) of the Punjab State Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017 look for;

1. that I do not act, and have not acted, for the Seller or for any person appearing in the chain of title to the Property, that I hold no interest in the Property, and that I will inform you at once if either of those things changes, and will then stop work and hand over the papers;

1. that I will examine the transactions concerning the Property over the period from __________ to the date of my report, and in any event over not less than the thirty years immediately preceding it;

1. that I will deliver my report and certificate of title by __________;

1. that my professional fee of __________ is payable __________, and that expenses will be charged at cost against receipts;

1. that I will hold everything you give me and everything I find in confidence; and

1. that on this engagement ending, from whatever cause, I will hand over to you within fifteen days every certified copy, portal print, fard, extract, receipt, application and acknowledgement number obtained at your expense, together with an itemised account of fees and expenses to that date.

___________________________
__________, Advocate
Enrolment No. __________
E-mail: __________ | Telephone: __________

ANNEXURE 2 — FORM OF THE CERTIFICATE OF TITLE TO BE RETURNED

CERTIFICATE OF TITLE

To

__________
__________

Date: ____________________

1. The Property. __________ situated at __________, in __________, admeasuring __________, described in the Schedule to these instructions.

1. Instructions. I was instructed by you on __________ to investigate the title to the Property and to examine the transactions concerning it from __________ to the date of this certificate, and in any event over not less than the thirty years immediately preceding it.

1. The period I actually examined. From ____________________ to the date of this certificate. Where that differs from either period in paragraph 2, the reason is: ____________________________________________

1. What I examined. I have examined the records and run the searches listed in the annexed report, in the offices and on the portals named there, on the dates stated against each. The devolution of title is set out in the table annexed.

1. Records I could not obtain. ____________________________________________ (list, with reasons; write "none" only if it is true)

1. Encumbrances. ____________________________________________

1. Litigation, acquisition and attachment. ____________________________________________

1. Pre-emption, where the Property lies in the State of Punjab. ____________________________________________ (name every recorded co-sharer and any recorded tenant, and say whether a right of pre-emption subsists and when it expires; write "not applicable" and say why if it does not arise)

1. Defects. ____________________________________________

1. Opinion. Subject to what is stated above, I am of the opinion that the title of __________ to the Property is / is not clear, marketable and free from reasonable doubt, and that the Property can / cannot safely be purchased. (Strike out what does not apply. If the title is not clear, say so in the first line of your covering letter as well.)

1. Documents to be handed over at completion. ____________________________________________

1. Steps to be taken after completion. ____________________________________________

1. Limits of this certificate. This certificate is based on the documents produced to me and on the public records I was able to inspect up to its date. It is not a valuation, it is not tax advice, and it does not extend to a document deliberately withheld from me. In the State of Punjab an entry in the record of rights is presumed to be true until the contrary is proved, under section 44 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887, and is not conclusive of title. In the Union Territory of Chandigarh the record of title is the allotment file of the Estate Officer, and this certificate does not warrant the grant of any permission or No Objection Certificate that remains to be obtained.

___________________________
__________, Advocate
Enrolment No. __________
__________

Delivered to the advocate at __________ and by e-mail to __________ on __________. Target date for completion of the purchase: __________.