Power of Attorney — what it can do, what it cannot, and the judgment every buyer should read

What a power of attorney actually is

A power of attorney is an instrument of agency. By it, one person — the principal or grantor — authorises another — the attorney or grantee — to do specified acts on the principal's behalf. The Supreme Court put it in one line: the grantor "authorizes the grantee to do the acts specified therein, on behalf of grantor".

Two words in that sentence carry the whole document. "Specified" — the attorney may do what the instrument names and nothing beyond it. And "on behalf of" — the acts are the principal's acts, done in the principal's name, for the principal's benefit. The attorney is a hand, not an owner.

That is why a power of attorney is so useful. An owner in Dubai can have a flat in Delhi let, repaired, registered or sold without flying back. A parent in hospital can have a bank matter handled. A company can have a director execute documents in another city. And it is also why the single most common use of the document in India is the one the courts have said does not work.

What the Supreme Court held

If you read nothing else on this page, read this. It is the difference between owning a home and holding a piece of paper that says you may act for somebody who owns it.

Take those four sentences one at a time, because each answers an argument that is still being made to buyers in 2026.

"Not an instrument of transfer." A power of attorney is not in the same family of documents as a sale deed. It is not a weaker transfer or a cheaper transfer. It is a different thing altogether — an authority to act, not a conveyance of anything.

"Does not convey any title nor create any interest." The combination people are sold — an agreement to sell, a general power of attorney, and a will, the so-called SA/GPA/WILL package — does not make the buyer an owner. Not partially. Not conditionally. The Court's words are "does not convey any title".

"Even an irrevocable attorney." This closes the argument that most often persuades buyers. The seller says the power is irrevocable, so the buyer is safe. Irrevocability governs whether the principal may withdraw the authority. It has nothing whatever to do with ownership, and the Court said so expressly.

"Only by a registered deed of conveyance." There is one lawful route to transfer immovable property, and that is it.

What a power of attorney can still do

None of the above makes the document useless. The Court itself preserved specific uses, and the everyday work a power of attorney does is untouched.

What the Court expressly preserved: such documents "may be used to obtain specific performance or to defend possession under section 53A of TP Act"; they "may continue to be treated as existing agreement of sale"; and they "may be relied upon to apply for regularization of allotments/leases by Development Authorities". Those are real protections for people already holding such papers — but note what they are. They are ways to enforce a promise or defend possession. None of them is ownership.

And then there is the ordinary, entirely proper work of the instrument:

• Executing a registered conveyance on the owner's behalf — which is the right way to use it in a property sale. The owner grants a power; the attorney signs and registers the sale deed; title passes by the registered deed, as it must.
• Presenting documents for registration — expressly contemplated by the Registration Act, which allows presentation by "the agent of such a person … duly authorised by power-of-attorney".
• Managing property — letting it, collecting rent, paying taxes and society dues, dealing with tenants, handling repairs.
• Banking and financial acts within the bank's own rules.
• Appearing and acting in litigation, to the extent the court permits.
• Business acts — signing contracts, filing returns, dealing with authorities.

GPA or SPA — which you need

Our advice in almost every case is the special power. People ask for a general power because it feels convenient — one document, no need to come back. But a general power over all your affairs, handed to somebody who will use it while you are ten thousand kilometres away, is a large amount of trust reduced to a page. A special power for the transaction actually in hand achieves the same result with a fraction of the exposure.

Authentication — the rule almost nobody knows

Here is a requirement that surprises even people who have done this before. If your attorney is going to present a document for registration on your behalf, it is not enough to have the power notarised. The Registration Act prescribes who must authenticate it, and it depends on where the principal lives.

Read the second and third quotes together and the asymmetry jumps out. A principal inside India must execute the power before the Sub-Registrar of the district where they reside. A notarised power will not do for this purpose. A principal outside India may use a Notary Public, a Court, a Judge, a Magistrate, an Indian Consul or Vice-Consul, or a representative of the Central Government.

People get this backwards constantly. They assume the domestic case is the easy one and the foreign case is hard. For this particular purpose it is close to the opposite.

Giving a power of attorney from abroad

This is the commonest reason an NRI contacts us, and there are two separate steps that must both be done right. Missing the second is what causes the document to fail months later.

Step one — execute it before the right authority

As above: a Notary Public, a Court, a Judge, a Magistrate, an Indian Consul or Vice-Consul, or a representative of the Central Government. In practice the two routes used are the Indian Mission in that country, or local notarisation followed by apostille or embassy attestation depending on whether the country is a Hague Convention member.

Step two — stamp it in India, within three months

This is the step that gets missed. Under Section 18 of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, an instrument chargeable with duty executed only out of India, not being a bill of exchange or promissory note, "may be stamped within three months after it has been first received in India".

The consequence of missing it is not that the document is void — it is that it becomes an unstamped instrument, liable to be impounded and to attract penalty before it can be acted upon. That is discovered at the worst possible moment, typically at the sub-registrar's counter with a buyer waiting.

When a power of attorney ends

Most people never think about this until it matters, and then it matters completely.

The fourth limb is the one to sit with. The power dies with the principal. The moment the owner dies, the attorney's authority ends — and anything the attorney purports to do afterwards is done without authority, whatever the paper says and whether or not anyone yet knows of the death.

This is precisely why a GPA sale fails so badly in practice. The "buyer" holds a power from a seller who remains the owner. When that seller dies, the power is gone, the property passes to the seller's heirs, and the buyer is left arguing with people who never agreed to anything.

The one qualification is Section 202: where the agent has an interest in the property which forms the subject-matter of the agency, the agency cannot, in the absence of an express contract, be terminated to the prejudice of that interest. That is what an "irrevocable" power really rests on — and even then, as the Supreme Court said in terms, it transfers no title.

What the document must contain

Safeguards worth building in

A power of attorney is a trust document. These are the clauses that keep it one:

• Make it special, not general, wherever the task allows.
• Name the property or account precisely. No category descriptions.
• Exclude the power to sell or mortgage unless selling or mortgaging is the actual purpose.
• Put an end date on it, or tie it to completion of the named transaction.
• Bar sub-delegation expressly.
• Require sale consideration to be paid into the principal's own account, never the attorney's. This single clause prevents the most common abuse there is.
• Require the attorney to account — to render statements and produce documents on demand.
• Consider two attorneys acting jointly for anything substantial.
• Keep the original. Give certified copies where possible, and be deliberate about who holds the original instrument.

What people use it for

Notice how many rows say "special". That is not caution for its own sake — it is because in every one of those situations the task is knowable in advance, and a power that names the task is both safer for the principal and easier for the sub-registrar, bank or court to accept without question.

Documents you need

How to revoke one properly

Revocation is simple in principle and is nearly always done badly.

1. Execute a deed of revocation in writing, identifying the original power by its date and particulars.
2. Register the revocation where the original power was registered. A registered power revoked by an unregistered scrap of paper leaves the public record showing an authority that no longer exists.
3. Serve it on the attorney, in a way you can prove — registered post with acknowledgement, courier with tracking, email to an address they use.
4. Tell everybody who might act on it. The sub-registrar, the bank, the housing society, the tenant, any buyer in negotiation, the company registrar if relevant. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that actually stops the harm.
5. Recover the original instrument if you can, and note in your records who holds each copy.
6. Consider a public notice in a newspaper where the power was wide, the attorney is uncooperative, or third parties may already be relying on it.

Why powers of attorney fail

1. Used as a substitute for a sale deed. The Supreme Court has answered this, and the answer does not change with the size of the discount.
2. Notarised where Section 33 required authentication by the Sub-Registrar of the district where the principal resides. Discovered at the registration counter.
3. Executed abroad and not stamped within three months of first receipt in India.
4. The powers are too vague. "To do all needful acts" is not a power to do a specific thing, and the officer being asked to act on it is entitled to say so.
5. The property is described loosely, so the document does not clearly relate to the property in question.
6. The principal has died and nobody realised the authority ended with them.
7. No end date, so a power given for one transaction in 2019 is still circulating in 2026.
8. Sub-delegation permitted, and the person now acting is a stranger to the principal.
9. Money routed through the attorney's account, because the document did not say otherwise.
10. The bank or institution has its own form and was never asked in advance.

Time and cost

Stamp duty on a power of attorney differs by state and by what it authorises — a power that includes authority to sell immovable property is usually charged very differently from one that merely permits management. We quote it as a separate line because it is a government charge and not ours.

How to order it — six steps

1. Tell us what the attorney actually has to do. Not "a GPA for property" — the real task. That sentence determines the whole instrument.
2. Tell us where the principal is, and where the property, account or case is. Those two facts decide the authentication route and the stamp duty.
3. We tell you the narrowest instrument that works, what it will cost including government charges, and — where it applies — that what you have been offered will not do what you think it does.
4. We draft it and send it for approval. The principal reads every power granted and every exclusion before anything is stamped.
5. Stamping and authentication. At the correct rate, before the authority Section 33 requires for the purpose — including arranging attestation at home where the principal cannot travel.
6. Delivery, then payment. And for a power executed abroad, stamping on arrival within the three-month window. You pay after the work is done.