The Karnataka High Court, in an effort to remove procedural bottlenecks in property registration following civil court decrees, has held that municipal authorities cannot refuse to issue e-khatas — which are mandatory for registration — to decree holders or court commissioners on the grounds that the application was not made by the previous owner or judgment-debtor.

Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum issued a series of guidelines on issuing e‑khatas and the registration of documents by registering authorities to enforce court decrees, after noticing that the district registrar in Tumakuru had, in August 2025, refused to register a property in favour of decree-holder P. S. Ashok Kumar for want of an e‑khata, despite papers being presented by a court commissioner based on a civil court decree in his favour.

Such situations, the court said, have repeatedly surfaced before it through several petitions, disclosing “a systemic incongruity, a grey area in the administrative framework wherein the executive machinery, instead of acting in furtherance of a binding judicial determination, operates in a manner that effectively renders the decree inexecutable.”

Civil court powers

Pointing out that the civil courts are vested with ample powers to ensure that the decrees are translated into reality, including by appointing a court commissioner where the judgment-debtor/earlier owner fails to cooperate, the court noted the difficulty, however, arises at the stage of registration, where the insistence on e-khata coupled with the reluctance of authorities to issue the same either in favour of the decree holder or the court commissioner creates a procedural deadlock.

In a large number of specific performance decrees, judgment-debtors deliberately avoid execution to frustrate the decree and evade securing the e-khata, which is mandatory for registration, leaving decree holders remediless and reducing court decrees to paper, undermining the rule of law, the court pointed out.

Bridging grey area

Judicial intervention in the form of guidelines is essential to bridge this grey area, existing due to the absence of a clear administrative protocol, to ensure that decrees are effectively enforced, the court said while observing that local and registering authorities cannot adopt hyper-technical or pedantic approach to defeat the fruits of a decree.