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
Ms. Simran Deep Kaur, Advocate
Enrolment No. P/1234/2009
Chamber No. 214, District Courts Complex, Ludhiana 141001
Telephone: +91 XXXXX XXXXX
E-mail: sdkaur.advocate@example.com
Date: 3 April 2026
Place: Ludhiana
SUBJECT: Instructions to investigate the title to agricultural land situated at House No. 1234, Sector 21-B, Chandigarh 160022, in the State of Punjab, offered for sale by Sh. Ram Lal Sharma and Smt. Shanti Devi Sharma, to examine the transactions concerning it from 2 April 2026 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, Harpreet Kaur Gill, son of Sh. Amarjit Singh Gill, resident of House No. 47, Model Town Extension, Ludhiana 141002, telephone +91 XXXXX XXXXX, e-mail harpreet.gill@example.com, and Manpreet Singh Gill, son of Sh. Amarjit Singh Gill, resident of House No. 47, Model Town Extension, Ludhiana 141002 (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. agricultural land situated at House No. 1234, Sector 21-B, Chandigarh 160022, in the State of Punjab, admeasuring 10 Marla (250 square yards) (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. The Property lies in the revenue estate of Village Dhandari Kalan, Tehsil Ludhiana (East), District Ludhiana. The Hadbast number of the revenue estate is 197. The Property is entered in the jamabandi at Khewat and Khatauni Khewat No. 412, Khatauni No. 561/2. The Khasra numbers comprised in the Property are Khasra Nos. 118//4 (8-0), 118//5/1 (3-12) and 118//6 (8-0), total measuring 19 kanals 12 marlas. 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. The Property is House, Site or Booth No. House No. 1234, Sector 21-B. It is held on a leasehold tenure. It is carried on the Estate Office record under Property ID CHD/EO/21B/1234. The allotment is evidenced by Allotment Letter No. EO/AL/21B/1234/1996 dated 12 August 1996. The Property was allotted by Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA), and that allotment file is part of the title. 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 Sh. Ram Lal Sharma, son of Late Sh. Devi Dayal Sharma, resident of House No. 12, Sector 15-A, Chandigarh 160015, and by Smt. Shanti Devi Sharma, son of Late Sh. Devi Dayal Sharma, resident of House No. 88, Urban Estate, Phase 2, Patiala 147002 (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. The consideration presently discussed between us is ₹85,00,000 (Rupees Eighty Five Lakh only). I have paid ₹5,00,000 (Rupees Five Lakh only) as token or earnest money. An agreement to sell dated 1 April 2026 has been signed, a copy of which is enclosed with these instructions. 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 intend to fund part of the price by a loan of ₹60,00,000 (Rupees Sixty Lakh only) from State Bank of India, Sector 17 Branch, Chandigarh, whose panel advocate will run a separate search of its own. That separate search is for the lender's protection and not for mine; it is no substitute for the report I am asking you for, and you are not to abridge your work because a lender is also looking. 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 5 April 2026. 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 2 April 2026 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 the State of Punjab, 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 not less than seven years but less than ten years, 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. I am aware of the following, and I want each of them dealt with expressly in your report: The seller says the property came to him under a family settlement in 2011 that was never registered, and his brother's name still appears in the record. 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. My additional instructions are: Please give me an interim position by e-mail within ten days on tenure and dues alone, before you begin the chain of title, because I have to decide by then whether to extend the earnest money. 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 4 April 2026. 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 ₹35,000 (Rupees Thirty Five Thousand only), payable one half on your accepting these instructions and the balance on delivery of the certificate of title. 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 incur more than ₹15,000 (Rupees Fifteen Thousand only) in such expenses without my written approval. 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.