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PART A — TEXT FOR PUBLICATION

Everything in Part A goes to the newspaper exactly as it stands, in both the English daily and the Punjabi daily. Nothing from Part B-1, Part B-2 or Part C is published.

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PUBLIC NOTICE
(Notice inviting claims and objections before purchase)

1. Public notice is given by the undersigned on behalf of my client, __________, __________, resident of __________ (hereinafter called "the intending purchaser"). The intending purchaser proposes to purchase the __________ more particularly described in the Schedule below (hereinafter called "the said property").

1. The said property is proposed to be purchased from __________, __________, resident of __________ (hereinafter called "the proposed seller", and where more than one person is named above, all of them together). The proposed seller represents that the said property belongs to the proposed seller and to no one else; that the proposed seller is in exclusive and peaceful possession of it and that no other person is in possession of any part of it; and that it is free from all encumbrances, claims, charges and demands.

1. The proposed seller claims title to the said property under and by virtue of: __________.

1. Title to the said property is recorded in __________. The undersigned has, on behalf of the intending purchaser and on __________, inspected and taken copies of the following: __________. This notice is issued because an entry in a record of rights is presumed to be true only until the contrary is proved, and because the claim that has never reached the record is precisely the claim this notice exists to bring out.

1. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that any person having or claiming any right, title, interest, share, claim or demand of whatsoever nature in or over the said property or any part of it — whether by way of ownership, co-ownership, inheritance, will, gift, trust, settlement, partition (whether by decree, by revenue order or oral), family arrangement, sale, agreement to sell, power of attorney, part performance, possession, tenancy whether marusi or gair marusi, theka, batai, licence, sub-lease, mortgage whether registered or by deposit of title deeds, charge, lien, easement, right of way, right of irrigation or watercourse, maintenance, adverse possession, decree or order of a civil, revenue or consolidation court, attachment, injunction, lis pendens, acquisition, requisition, shamlat or Panchayat claim, consolidation or repartition entry, unpaid land revenue, ground rent, premium, misuse or non-construction charge, municipal or property tax, or any other statutory due, or in any other manner howsoever — is hereby called upon to make the same known in writing to the undersigned.

1. This notice is being published in one English daily and one Punjabi daily. Any such claim must reach the undersigned within __________ days from the date on which this notice is LAST published, so that a person who sees only the earlier of the two publications loses nothing by it. The claim must (a) set out the nature and extent of the claim, (b) be signed by the claimant or by the claimant's authorised advocate, (c) give the claimant's full name, parentage, postal address, telephone number and e-mail, and (d) be accompanied by legible copies of the documents relied upon, including any fard or jamabandi, mutation, rapat, allotment or re-allotment letter, or registered deed.

1. Claims and objections are to be sent to: __________, Advocate, __________.

1. If no claim or objection is received within the said period, the intending purchaser will proceed to complete the purchase on the footing that the said property is free from all claims and encumbrances, and no person failing to respond will thereafter be heard to say that the purchase was made without enquiry or otherwise than in good faith. This notice is issued by way of public enquiry and information. It does not by itself waive, extinguish, bar or determine any right that any person may have in law.

SCHEDULE OF THE SAID PROPERTY

All that __________ described as follows:

Description and address: __________

Identification on record: __________

Area / extent: __________

Bounded as under:
North by: __________
South by: __________
East by: __________
West by: __________

Place: __________
Date: __________

Sd/-
__________
Advocate

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PART B-1 — RELEASE INSTRUCTION TO THE ENGLISH DAILY

This is the covering letter that carries Part A to the English daily's advertisement counter. Print it on the advocate's letterhead. Do not send it for publication. Release Part A on the same day to both papers, using Part B-1 for the English daily and Part B-2 for the Punjabi daily.

To
The Manager — Advertisements (Public Notices / Classifieds)
__________
__________

Date: __________

Subject: Release of a Public Notice for publication — __________

Sir / Madam,

1. Please publish the Public Notice set out at Part A of this instruction, under the "Public Notices" heading, in __________, __________.

1. Please publish the text exactly as given. No word, figure, khewat, khatauni, khasra, killa, murabba, hadbast, sector, plot, house, booth, file or document number, no area and no boundary description is to be altered, abbreviated, rounded, transliterated or dropped for want of space. If the text must be reduced to fit, please revert to me before publication rather than editing it at your end. A single wrong digit in a khasra number makes the whole notice worthless.

1. Please confirm to me in writing, before publication, the insertion order number, the size in column-centimetres, the rate and the total amount payable.

1. On publication, please supply (a) two complete tear sheets of the full page carrying the notice, showing the masthead, the edition name and the date of the issue, (b) the tax invoice or payment receipt, and (c) your certificate of publication, if your office issues one.

1. A parallel instruction in identical terms is being released to __________, __________. Please schedule this insertion for the same date if that can be arranged. The objection period printed in the notice runs from the date of the LATER of the two publications, so please tell me at once if this insertion cannot appear on the date requested.

ENCLOSURES

1. Text of the Public Notice for publication (Part A).
2. Copy of the advocate's Bar Council identity or enrolment card — most advertisement counters require this before accepting a legal public notice.
3. Letter of authority from the intending purchaser, with a copy of the purchaser's photo identity document.
4. Copy of the title document referred to at paragraph 3 of the notice — some advertisement offices ask for it, most do not; carry it either way.
5. Payment: cheque, demand draft, or UPI / NEFT transaction reference for the advertisement charges.

Yours faithfully,

__________
Advocate
__________

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PART B-2 — RELEASE INSTRUCTION TO THE PUNJABI DAILY

The same letter, addressed to the Punjabi daily. It is a separate release to a separate counter: a Punjabi paper will not act on a letter addressed to another newspaper. Print it on the advocate's letterhead. Do not send it for publication.

To
The Manager — Advertisements (Public Notices / Classifieds)
__________
__________

Date: __________

Subject: Release of a Public Notice for publication — __________

Sir / Madam,

1. Please publish the Public Notice set out at Part A of this instruction, under the "Public Notices" heading, in __________, __________.

1. Please publish the text exactly as given. No word, figure, khewat, khatauni, khasra, killa, murabba, hadbast, sector, plot, house, booth, file or document number, no area and no boundary description is to be altered, abbreviated, rounded, transliterated or dropped for want of space. The descriptive text may be set in Gurmukhi, but EVERY NUMBER IN THE SCHEDULE MUST APPEAR IN THE SAME FIGURES AS IN THE ENGLISH TEXT and must not be re-typed in words. If the text must be reduced to fit, please revert to me before publication rather than editing it at your end. A single wrong digit in a khasra number makes the whole notice worthless.

1. Please confirm to me in writing, before publication, the insertion order number, the size in column-centimetres, the rate and the total amount payable.

1. On publication, please supply (a) two complete tear sheets of the full page carrying the notice, showing the masthead, the edition name and the date of the issue, (b) the tax invoice or payment receipt, and (c) your certificate of publication, if your office issues one.

1. A parallel instruction in identical terms is being released to __________, __________. Please schedule this insertion for the same date if that can be arranged. The objection period printed in the notice runs from the date of the LATER of the two publications, so please tell me at once if this insertion cannot appear on the date requested.

ENCLOSURES

1. Text of the Public Notice for publication (Part A), together with the Gurmukhi setting where your office prepares one.
2. Copy of the advocate's Bar Council identity or enrolment card — most advertisement counters require this before accepting a legal public notice.
3. Letter of authority from the intending purchaser, with a copy of the purchaser's photo identity document.
4. Copy of the title document referred to at paragraph 3 of the notice — some advertisement offices ask for it, most do not; carry it either way.
5. Payment: cheque, demand draft, or UPI / NEFT transaction reference for the advertisement charges.

Yours faithfully,

__________
Advocate
__________

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PART C — NOTES FOR THE FILE (NOT FOR PUBLICATION)

WHY IT IS TWO PAPERS, ONE OF THEM PUNJABI

1. The English daily is for the lender's file and for a court. The Punjabi daily is the one that works. A public notice about land in a village reaches the people who actually know its history — the halqa patwari, the numberdar, the neighbouring khewatdars, the theka tenant in possession — only if it is printed in the paper they read. Publish the Punjabi insertion in the edition that circulates in the tehsil where the property lies, not in the state-wide edition alone.

1. Publish both on the same date if you can. Where you cannot, the printed words already settle the arithmetic: paragraph 6 of Part A counts the objection period from the date the notice is LAST published, so an objector who saw only the earlier paper is not shortened by the later one, and the last date on your file is the same last date a claimant would compute. Diarise from the later tear sheet, never from the earlier.

WHAT THIS NOTICE ACHIEVES IN LAW

1. It is evidence that you enquired. Under s.3 of the Transfer of Property Act 1882 a purchaser is fixed with constructive notice of facts he would have found had he not wilfully abstained from enquiry or been grossly negligent. A published notice is the cleanest available answer to that charge.

1. It supports you as a purchaser who took reasonable care. Section 41 of the same Act protects a transferee who buys in good faith from an ostensible owner, but only if the transferee took reasonable care to ascertain that the transferor had power to make the transfer. Publication, the record search and the Non-Encumbrance Certificate together are what reasonable care looks like here.

1. It works. In practice this is how mortgagees holding original deeds, heirs left out of a family settlement, agreement-holders and tenants in possession actually surface. That is the return on the advertisement cost.

WHAT IT DOES NOT ACHIEVE — READ THIS PART

1. It does not cure a defective title and does not create a marketable one. Silence is not consent. Nobody loses a right in property by failing to read a newspaper.

1. It does not shorten limitation, does not bind a person who never saw it, and does not defeat a registered document, a court attachment, a lis pendens entry or a statutory charge. A seller with no title still conveys no title — and neither a power of attorney, nor an agreement to sell, nor a will, singly or in combination, conveys any: the authority is Suraj Lamp & Industries (P) Ltd. (II) v. State of Haryana, Supreme Court of India, decided 11 October 2011. Put the case name here, in the Title Investigation Report and in the agreement to sell. Do not pay column-centimetres to print it in the newspaper; paragraph POWER OF ATTORNEY in Part A states the proposition and dates the judgment, which is all a claimant needs.

1. It is not a Fard Badar. If the complaint is that the jamabandi entry is itself wrong, the remedy is a fard badar — decided by the Circle Revenue Officer where the correction is confined to entries made in preparing the current consigned jamabandi, and by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate where it reaches back into earlier jamabandis (Punjab Land Records Manual para 7.29; no hearing of the parties is required). A mutation must not be used to correct an entry already in the jamabandi (para 7.30) — that route is a suit.

1. It is not the Estate Office's public notice. Where a Chandigarh property changes hands on intestate death, a will, a court decree or a family settlement, or where the Karta of a Hindu undivided family or a partner in a firm changes, the Estate Officer issues his own public notice before mutating. Nothing you publish starts that clock. The Chandigarh Housing Board runs the same course for its own flats.

THE SEARCHES THIS NOTICE DOES NOT REPLACE — PUNJAB

1. The jamabandi and the mutation trail. Pull the current jamabandi and every intkal since the last consigned jamabandi from jamabandi.punjab.gov.in, and take a certified or digitally signed fard. Certified copies are issued at the tehsil Fard Kendra and, since the April 2025 decision to fold that work into the Sewa Kendras, increasingly at a Sewa Kendra — ask at the tehsil which counter is issuing today, because both channels are in use. A certified copy of a jamabandi from the patwari is charged Rs 20 per page of the original and a Fard Haqiat Rs 20 irrespective of the number of khewats (Punjab Land Records Manual para 3.48, under Rule 71).

1. The Non-Encumbrance Certificate, through the Non-Encumbrance Certificate Issuance System on rcms.punjab.gov.in — a three-day notified service. On the same portal, run the property-under-litigation search and check the Land Demarcation System for any pending nishandehi.

1. Possession, not just ownership. Read the khasra girdawari for the last several harvests: it records who actually cultivated. A theka tenant in possession, or an occupancy tenant, will show there and nowhere else.

1. Shamlat. If any part of the holding is entered in the ownership column as Jumla Malkan Wa Digar Haqdaran Arazi Hassab Rasad, Jumla Malkan or Mushtarka Malkan, it is within the definition of shamilat deh in s.2(g) of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act 1961 and may have vested in the Panchayat. A claim of right, title or interest goes to the Collector under s.11, with appeal to the Commissioner in 60 days, and the civil court is barred by s.13. Do not buy across that line on an assurance.

1. Consolidation and fragments. Check whether the estate has been through consolidation and whether the repartition is final; a transfer or partition that creates a fragment in a notified area is void under ss.8 and 9 of the East Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act 1948.

1. Colony and authority clearances. For land in a colony, check the licence under s.5 of the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act 1995 and the position on the s.20(3) no objection certificate, which has moved more than once and should be confirmed at the Sub-Registrar before you fix a completion date. For a plot or house allotted by a development authority or an Improvement Trust, the allottee cannot transfer without the Authority's previous permission (s.43(7), Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act 1995) and the land continues to belong to the Authority until the whole consideration with interest and other dues is paid (s.43(6)). Ask for the allotment or re-allotment letter, the no dues certificate and the conveyance deed, and remember that a transfer taken before the conveyance deed is executed can attract the Authority's own transfer fee.

THE SEARCHES THIS NOTICE DOES NOT REPLACE — CHANDIGARH

1. There is no jamabandi for sector property. The Estate Officer's allotment file is the title record. Run Know Your Property and Know Your Dues on estateoffice.chd.gov.in and get the User Account Statement, then ask for the No Dues Certificate. Under s.3(3) of the Capital of Punjab (Development and Regulation) Act 1952 the site continues to belong to the Central Government until the entire consideration with interest and every other amount due is paid — an allottee who has not paid in full cannot give you good title, whatever the deed says.

1. Leasehold or freehold, and which one decides the whole timetable. A leasehold or concessionally allotted site cannot be transferred before 15 years from allotment, and on transfer one-third of the unearned increase is payable to Government before the sale is registered, the unearned increase being the difference between the original premium enhanced at 9% per annum compounded and the current market value assessed on the average auction price for the category over the last three financial years (Rule 7(i) and (ii), Chandigarh Estate Rules 2007). Adding, deleting or substituting a mother, father, spouse, son or daughter with the Estate Officer's permission is not a transfer at all (Rule 7(iii)). A leasehold transfer needs the Estate Office no objection certificate first — a 50-day notified service — and the sale cannot be registered without it.

1. Enforcement history on the file. Ask for any show cause or order under s.8-A (resumption, with forfeiture capped at ten per cent), under Rule 10 (misuse, charged at Rs 500 per square foot per month, though whether that 2007 figure reaches a site allotted before 7 November 2007 is genuinely unsettled and has been litigated), under Rule 8 (failure to build within three years, with the penalty ladder that follows) and under Rule 14. An appeal against an Estate Officer's order lies to the Chief Administrator within 30 days, then by revision to the Adviser to the Administrator for orders under the 2007 Rules or to the Central Government for orders under ss.8 and 8-A. Section 19 of the 1952 Act bars the civil court from all of it, so a buyer who inherits one of these proceedings cannot simply sue.

1. The 2023 freeze. Following the Supreme Court's judgment of 10 January 2023 prohibiting fragmentation, division, bifurcation and apartmentalisation of a residential unit in Phase-I, the Estate Officer's public notice effective 10 February 2023 permits transfers only within four categories, and stops transfers and mutations of other residential properties pending the Heritage Committee's decision. Whether that freeze is still running has not been established. If your seller and co-owners are not one family, or you are buying a share rather than the whole, confirm at the Estate Office in writing before you pay anything. No fragmentation or amalgamation is permitted in any event (Rule 16).

1. Chandigarh Housing Board flats run on their own track: a five-year lock-in from physical possession, no conveyance deed already executed, all dues paid, no title dispute, and a joint application by allottee and purchaser under Regulation 16 of the 1979 Regulations.

1. The villages are the exception. In Manimajra and the lal dora and phirni areas the revenue record does exist, and the registration checklist there calls for a fard and a Naib Tehsildar's report. Do not tell a buyer in those areas that there is no fard.

FEE, TIMING AND WHAT YOU GET BACK

1. Cost is by column-centimetre and by edition, and you are paying twice because you are publishing twice. A classified public notice in a Punjabi daily commonly runs a few thousand rupees; a display notice in an English daily's Chandigarh or Ludhiana edition runs considerably higher. Ask each paper for the rate card and get both insertion orders in writing before you release.

1. Publication is normally one to three working days after release. The objection window runs from the later publication, not from the date on the notice. For a fourteen-day notice budget about three weeks end to end and write that into the agreement to sell.

1. You should get back, from each paper, the insertion order number, the printed tear sheets and the tax invoice. Keep the entire page with the masthead and date — a cutting of the notice alone proves nothing years later. Scan both the day they arrive.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

1. Diarise the last date for objections the day the later notice appears.

1. If an objection arrives, acknowledge it in writing within the week, take copies of everything sent, and do not complete until the claim has been examined. A genuine claim is why you published. Use the acknowledgment at paragraph 30 below.

1. If nothing arrives, record that fact in a signed and dated note on the file, and in the Title Investigation Report if a bank is involved. Do not write to the newspaper asking for a no objection certificate; newspapers do not issue one.

1. Publish before you pay substantial consideration and before the sale deed, not after. A notice published after completion protects nobody and is the commonest way this document is wasted. Deliver a copy of the tear sheet by hand, against a diary number, to the Sub-Registrar of the tehsil and the Tehsildar's office in Punjab, or to the Estate Officer, Town Hall Building, Sector 17-C, in Chandigarh, so that it sits on the file the next searcher opens.

1. If completion slips by several months beyond the notice period, consider republishing. Some lender panel formats require it.

1. Acknowledgment of an objection received, to be issued on letterhead: "Received on ______ from ______ an objection dated ______, in response to the Public Notice published in __________, __________, and in __________, __________, in respect of the property described in the Schedule to that notice, together with ______ pages of enclosures. The objection is under examination and my client's position is reserved. This acknowledgment is not an admission of the claim. — __________, Advocate."

IF THE PURCHASER PUBLISHES WITHOUT AN ADVOCATE

1. Change "my client", "the undersigned" and "the intending purchaser" to "I" or "we" throughout Part A — paragraph 4 in particular, where the inspection of the record is attributed to the undersigned and must become your own — give your own address for objections, delete the enrolment number and the Bar Council enclosure from both Part B-1 and Part B-2, and sign in your own name. A mixed-voice notice — "my client" over a purchaser's own signature — is the commonest error in a self-published notice and it invites the counter to reject the release.