SANGUEM: In what could be a big relief to NRI/OCI/PIO and foreign nationals executing Sale Deeds and/or entering into a registered Agreement for Sale either for sale or purchase of property in Goa, the Department of Land & Judiciary, Government of Goa vide order dated 01.06.2018, has revoked its earlier order dated 01.08.2013 wherein permission from FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Authority) was compulsory for NRI/OCI/PIO and foreign nationals intending to buy and/or sell properties in Goa.
The order dated 01.06.2018 issued by the Department of Law and Judiciary states that the onus of complying with FEMA Regulations is now on the parties to the transaction, that is, vendors, purchaser and confirming party. It shall not be endeavour of the Civil Registrars cum Sub Registrars to scrutinize the compliance of FEMA regulations.
The order further states that if any of the transacting parties to the indenture is NRI/OCI/PIO and foreign national, then a specific averment needs to be made in the instrument proposed to be registered that the land under transaction is non-agricultural land and that they own the responsibility for the said averment that their transaction is in compliance of FEMA/RBI guidelines.
The registering authority shall not be responsible to authenticate or verify the veracity of averment or declaration or to check the compliance of FEMA Regulations. The role of the civil registrars cum sub registrars shall be limited only with respect to compliance of provisions of Registration Act and Rules, concludes the order.
It is pertinent to note here that since August 2013, the NRI/OCI/PIO and Foreign National intending to register a document of Sale or purchase in Goa were required to obtain order from the FEMA Committee for the registration of the document by the Sub Registrar and for which purpose an application together with the copy of the document to be registered was required to be submitted to the Office of the State Register Panjim.
The application would then placed before the FEMA Committee by the State Registrar and approval for registering the document would be granted if all the documents placed before the committee were found to be in order and/or rejected if the document fails to meet certain criteria.
Incidentally since the FEMA Committee was meeting only once a month, the parties had to wait for the end of the month to get the approvals from the Committee.
However the recent order will come as a big solace for NRI/OCI/PIO and Foreign National intending to buy and/or sell their ancestral properties in Goa.
