The Document That Cannot Do What Millions of Buyers Thought It Did
For decades, a huge share of urban property in India changed hands not through registered sale deeds but through a "GPA sale" — a General Power of Attorney, paired with an unregistered agreement to sell, used as a stand-in for actual conveyance to dodge stamp duty and registration formalities. In Suraj Lamp & Industries Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656, the Supreme Court put an end to that practice, holding that such arrangements do not, and never did, transfer ownership. Section 84 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) governs a narrower, adjacent question that survives that ruling untouched: how a court presumes a power-of-attorney document itself was genuinely executed and authenticated, whatever it is or is not later used for.
84. Presumption as to powers-of-attorney.
The Court shall presume that every document purporting to be a power-of-attorney, and to have been executed before, and authenticated by, a Notary Public, or any Court, Judge, Magistrate, Indian Consul or Vice-Consul, or representative of the Central Government, was so executed and authenticated.
Section 84 corresponds word-for-word to Section 85 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Unlike Section 88's dropped colonial reference or Section 85's restored "digital" wording, this one carries over with no confirmed difference at all — verified against two independent sources, writinglaw.com and lawglobalhub.com, and cross-checked against the BSA-to-IEA correspondence table.
What the Presumption Covers — and the Single Word That Limits It
Read the section closely and its scope is precise: the court shall presume that a document purporting to be a power-of-attorney was executed before, and authenticated by, one of the listed authorities — a Notary Public, a Court, a Judge, a Magistrate, an Indian Consul or Vice-Consul, or a representative of the Central Government. The presumption attaches to the fact of execution and authentication by that listed authority. It says nothing about the contents of the power-of-attorney, the scope of authority it grants the agent, or — critically, after Suraj Lamp — what legal effect any transaction carried out under it actually has.
| Section 84 Presumes | Section 84 Says Nothing About |
|---|---|
| The document was executed before, and authenticated by, the named authority | Whether the agent's actions under the power-of-attorney were within the authority actually granted |
| The listed authority (Notary, Court, Consul, etc.) genuinely performed the authentication it purports to have performed | Whether a sale of immovable property "executed" through the attorney actually transfers title |
Why Suraj Lamp Left This Presumption Alone but Gutted a Practice Built on Top of It
The Supreme Court in Suraj Lamp was not concerned with whether powers-of-attorney were genuinely authenticated — it was concerned with what people were doing with them. The Court held that Sections 54 and 55 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 require a registered instrument to transfer ownership in immovable property valued above the statutory threshold, and that a General Power of Attorney, even a validly executed and authenticated one, is not a substitute for that registered conveyance. A GPA merely creates an agency relationship — the power to act on the principal's behalf — it does not, by itself, transfer any interest in property to the agent or to anyone the agent purports to sell it to. Crucially, this meant that even a power-of-attorney that fully satisfies Section 84's presumption — genuinely notarised, genuinely authenticated exactly as it claims — still cannot achieve what "GPA sales" had been widely, and wrongly, assumed to achieve for decades.
The Authentication Chain Section 84 Actually Presumes
Why the List of Authenticating Authorities Is Deliberately Broad
The section names six distinct categories — Notary Public, Court, Judge, Magistrate, Indian Consul or Vice-Consul, and representative of the Central Government — precisely because powers-of-attorney are executed in a wide range of settings, including abroad, where an Indian party may have no ready access to a domestic notary. An Indian citizen executing a power-of-attorney before an Indian Consul in a foreign country gets exactly the same presumption of genuine execution as one notarised in a local Indian court registry. This breadth is what makes Section 84 genuinely useful in practice — cross-border transactions, NRI property management, and litigation involving parties abroad routinely rely on powers-of-attorney authenticated through consular channels, and this section spares the party relying on such a document from independently proving consular authentication procedure from scratch.
A Practical Illustration
An NRI residing in Canada executes a power-of-attorney before the Indian Consulate in Toronto, authorising a relative in India to manage and eventually sell a flat in Mumbai on their behalf. In later litigation over the relative's authority to act, Section 84 lets the court presume, without requiring the Consulate to formally certify the event, that the power-of-attorney was genuinely executed and authenticated as it states. If the relative then executes and registers a proper sale deed under that authority, the sale is valid. If instead the relative had simply handed over the flat's keys against an unregistered agreement, relying on the power-of-attorney alone as if it transferred ownership, Suraj Lamp makes clear no ownership would have passed at all — Section 84's presumption about the power-of-attorney's authenticity would have been entirely irrelevant to that separate, fatal defect.
Key Takeaways
- Section 84 BSA carries forward Section 85 IEA verbatim, with no confirmed wording change, verified against two independent sources.
- It creates a mandatory presumption that a power-of-attorney purporting to be executed before, and authenticated by, one of six listed authorities was genuinely so executed and authenticated.
- The presumption never extends to the scope of authority granted or the legal effect of acts done under the power-of-attorney — those remain separate questions.
- Suraj Lamp & Industries Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656, holds that even a validly authenticated power-of-attorney cannot substitute for a registered conveyance in transferring immovable property — a ruling that operates entirely independently of Section 84's own presumption.
- The six listed authenticating authorities deliberately include consular officers, making the presumption available for powers-of-attorney executed by Indians abroad.
Conclusion
Section 84 does exactly one job well — it removes the friction of independently proving that a notarised or consularly authenticated power-of-attorney is what it claims to be. What it was never meant to do, and what the Supreme Court finally closed off in 2012 after decades of contrary practice, is stand in for the registered conveyance that alone transfers ownership of immovable property in India. The presumption chain continues into the substantive-law proof provisions of Section 83, covered next.