CASE STUDY I - Land acquisition for a manufacturing unit:

A client setting up a secondary plastic packaging unit required about 13 acres of land, which was available in small lots and owned by 10 different vendors. As per the system prevailing locally (different parts of India has its own peculiar ways of operating), the landowners give a Power of Attorney to a middleman who in turn deals with the buyer and signs all the land documents. As a Power of Attorney can be revoked at any time by the issuer, there is a grave risk of such a transaction being challenged by the owner after the transaction is done. The title of land so acquired is very questionable and unsafe. The client not aware of the repercussions of dealing on the basis of Power of Attorney, and based on local advice was willing to go ahead with the matter not realizing the serious implications of an imperfect land title. We prevailed upon the client/ the locals and ensured that all the land documents were signed personally by the individual sellers and not the Power of Attorney holder. The owners also signed all the land registration documents personally before the Registration Authority ensuring that they never retract the sale transaction. By following our advice, the client was able to achieve a very good title to the land.