CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has held that registration authorities cannot assume the role of a civil court to adjudicate the validity of an adoption while considering a document presented for registration.
Such authorities are required to examine whether the document fulfils the statutory requirements under the Registration Act, 1908, and cannot conduct a trial into disputed questions of fact or legal rights, the single judge bench of Justice Sashikanta Mishra ruled.
Considering a writ petition filed by one Kamala Jena, Justice Mishra set aside orders of the sub-registrar, Simulia, and additional district magistrate-cum-district registrar, Balasore, refusing registration of a deed acknowledging an adoption performed more than two decades ago.
“The registering authority is not vested with the jurisdiction of a civil court and cannot assume an adjudicatory role in determining disputed questions of right, title or legal entitlement,” Justice Mishra observed.
The case concerned the adoption of Kamala Kanta Mandal, son of Kamala Jena and Purastam Jena, by Bhaskar Mandal and his wife Laxmi Mandal in March 2001, when he was around nine years old. Though an adoption ceremony was performed at the adoptive parents’ residence, no deed was executed at that time.
In September 2025, the natural parents, adoptive mother and adoptee executed a deed acknowledging the adoption and presented it for registration.
The sub-registrar refused, citing absence of contemporaneous evidence, lack of independent witnesses, discrepancies in identity records and subsequent modification of the adoptee’s Aadhaar card. The district registrar upheld the refusal in April 2026.
Rejecting this approach, Justice Mishra said the document was not intended to effect a fresh adoption but merely to acknowledge an adoption claimed to have taken place in 2001. Therefore, the authority was required to examine its registrability, not determine whether the adoption was legally established under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, the judge added.
He clarified that registration would not conclusively establish the adoption’s validity or prevent anyone from challenging it before a competent civil court.
