Power of attorney India from Australia: the three-month clock that starts when the document lands

A general power of attorney signed in Canada on 10 February 2020 reached its recipient in India on 6 March 2020. The District Registrar (East) at Vijayawada recorded it as presented on 21 December 2021 and refused it. Section 18 of the Indian Stamp Act 1899 allows three months from receipt in India for stamping. It took a writ petition and a judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on 21 March 2022 to get it accepted, with duty and a penalty attached. Anyone arranging a power of attorney India from Australia deals with Australian certification first and Indian stamp law once the document arrives.

What a power of attorney does, and what it cannot do

India’s Powers-of-Attorney Act 1882 defines the instrument as one “empowering a specified person to act for and in the name of the person executing it”. The Supreme Court set its limits in Suraj Lamp & Industries v State of Haryana on 11 October 2011: “A power of attorney is not an instrument of transfer in regard to any right, title or interest in an immovable property.” It “is revocable or terminable at any time unless it is made irrevocable in a manner known to law”. The attorney can, however, “execute a deed of conveyance in exercise of the power granted under the power of attorney and convey title on behalf of the grantor”.

The rate of stamp duty on a power of attorney is a state matter: entry 63 of the Constitution’s State List gives state legislatures power over stamp duty rates on documents outside the Union List. In 2012 the Supreme Court reproduced Madhya Pradesh’s Article 45, as amended in 2002, which charged a power for a “single transaction” less than one for “more than one transaction or generally”. The Punjab and Haryana High Court that year quoted Article 48 as it applied in Chandigarh, where a power “given for consideration and authorising the attorney to sell any immovable property” carried the same duty as a conveyance.

Power of attorney India from Australia: the two routes to certification

Section 32 of the Registration Act 1908 allows a document to be presented for registration by an agent “duly authorised by power-of-attorney”, and section 33 lists the only powers a registry may recognise. For a principal who does not live in India, the power must be “executed before and authenticated by a Notary Public, or any Court, Judge, Magistrate, Indian Consul or Vice-Consul, or representative of the Central Government”. A power that shows this on its face “may be proved by the production of it without further proof”. In Australia that produces two routes.

Route one is attestation by the Indian mission, with applications collected through VFS Global. The VFS checklist says signature attestation “is given to Indian nationals holding valid Indian passport only”, that “The signature needs to be first attested by JP/Notary”, and that Indian nationals submit their original passport. It asks for a blank space of about 7 to 10 cm at the end of the document for the consulate’s signature and stamp. It also states: “All applicants should ensure that documents submitted for attestation (other than documents issued by Indian authorities) have the apostille stamp from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)”. For a foreign national, the documents “should be apostilled by DFAT first”, with an undertaking letter. The fee “will vary depending on the type of document”, the High Commission’s fee schedule adds an A$4 Indian Community Welfare Fund charge to miscellaneous consular services, and VFS adds its own service charges. On 30 September 2026 the High Commission in Canberra issued a tender for a service provider, on a three-year contract, to run consular and attestation support services at the five Indian missions in Australia, with the award scheduled for 27 November 2026, subject to change.

Route two is a notary and an apostille. India has been a party to the Hague Apostille Convention since 14 July 2005, and the Ministry of External Affairs states that a document apostilled in one member country is acceptable in all the others. VFS’s Australian attestation page adds that where documents are already apostilled by DFAT, “no further attestation by the High Commission/Consulates is required” and they “are entitled to recognition in India”. DFAT will legalise private documents “once they are notarised by an Australian Notary Public”. From 1 January 2026 an apostille costs A$105, a fee DFAT adjusts in line with the consumer price index on 1 January each year. Documents can be lodged at any Australian Passport Office by appointment, or sent by registered post. On apostille versus authentication, DFAT says: “We can’t advise which one you need. You must ask the receiving authority overseas what they want.”

The three-month clock under section 18

The Stamp Act charges duty on an instrument executed out of India that “relates to any property situate, or to any matter or thing done or to be done, in India and is received in India”. A document signed in India must be stamped “before or at the time of execution”. A document signed abroad gets a grace period instead: it “may be stamped within three months after it has been first received in India”. The signing date in Australia does not start the clock; receipt in India does.

An instrument that is not stamped in time falls under section 33. Any person in charge of a public office before whom an instrument is produced must, if it “is not duly stamped”, “impound the same”, and section 38 sends it to the Collector. Under section 40 the Collector requires the proper duty plus a penalty of up to “ten times the amount of the proper duty or of the deficient portion thereof”. The Supreme Court applied the Act to a power executed in Malaysia in Malaysian Airlines Systems v STIC Travels in November 2000.

That was the law applied in Pedapudi Alfred Johnson Jeyakaran v State of Andhra Pradesh. The petitioner’s sister, a resident of Canada, had given him a power to sell her apartment in Vijayawada. Justice U. Durga Prasad Rao rejected his argument that COVID-19 lockdowns excused the delay, finding “no material before this Court to hold that there was a continuous lockdown”. The court ruled that “though the instrument was executed outside India and it was not duly stamped and presented before 3rd respondent within the period of three months, the said authority can impound the same and collect the required stamp duty and penalty and validate the document.” The registrar was directed to do so within two weeks. The document had been presented more than eighteen months after its three months ran out. The court also noted that section 18 has no application to a power executed abroad that was duly stamped with Indian non-judicial stamp paper before or at the time of signing.

At the registry in India

The Registration Act supplies a second clock. Under section 23 a document other than a will must be presented for registration “within four months from the date of its execution”. Section 32A requires everyone presenting a document to affix a passport size photograph and fingerprints, and, where ownership of immovable property is transferred, those of each buyer and seller. An attorney who presents a document under section 32 is a presenter for this purpose.

Revoking the power

Under the Indian Contract Act 1872 an agency ends when the principal revokes it, the agent renounces it, the business is completed, either party dies or becomes of unsound mind, or the principal is adjudicated insolvent. Section 208 adds that termination does not take effect, “so far as regards third persons, before it becomes known to them”. A revocation signed in Australia therefore does not bind people in India who have not learnt of it.

On the Australian side, the VFS checklist and DFAT’s apostille fee, A$105 in 2026, are published. On the Indian side, where the 1899 Act applies, section 18 counts three months from the day the document is first received in India, not from the day it is signed, and section 33 requires a registrar to impound an instrument that is not duly stamped. This article is general information, not legal or tax advice.