The Supreme Court has set aside a 2009 Memo issued by the Jharkhand Registration Department that required cooperative housing societies to obtain a separate recommendation from the Assistant Registrar before availing stamp duty exemption under Section 9A of the Indian Stamp (Bihar Amendment) Act, 1988.
The Bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar held that the additional requirement was superfluous, irrelevant, and disrupted the ease of transactions guaranteed to cooperative societies. The Court also held that administrative procedures should avoid complexity, redundant requirements, and unnecessary burdens, which waste time, expense, and disturb peace of mind because ‘simplicity in public transactions is good governance.’
Section 9A grants a full stamp duty exemption on the transfer of premises by a registered cooperative society to its members. The Court emphasised that once a society is registered under the Jharkhand Self-Supporting Cooperative Societies Act, 1996, the certificate of registration is conclusive proof of its existence under Section 5(7) of the Act. Requiring another layer of verification from the Assistant Registrar had no statutory basis and constituted an unnecessary administrative hurdle.
Rejecting the High Court’s view that the Memo was necessary to ensure that only validly registered cooperative societies received the stamp duty exemption, the Supreme Court held that the additional approval requirement was based on irrelevant considerations and was legally unsustainable. The certificate of registration itself provides sufficient assurance of authenticity and is binding on the State, the bench noted while also rejecting the state’s submission that the memo was to ensure that fake cooperative societies do not avail the benefit of the exemption.
Allowing the appeal, the Court restored the statutory scheme and reaffirmed that exemptions under Section 9A must be granted without additional, non-statutory barriers.
Appearances
Petitioner- Mr. Rahul Arya
Respondents- Mr. Kumar Anurag Singh
