What is general power of attorney (GPA)?
Also called: GPA, GPA sale, aam mukhtarnama, SA-GPA-Will
A GPA authorises an agent to handle a wide range of matters for the owner. In property, a 'GPA sale' means the old Delhi-NCR practice of selling through a GPA, agreement to sell and will, which the Supreme Court has held does not transfer ownership.
A GPA in itself is a legitimate and useful document. An elderly owner in Chandigarh can give her son a GPA to pay property tax, deal with the municipal corporation, let out the house and appear before the sub-registrar for her. The trouble began when GPAs were used in place of a sale.
From the 1980s through the 2000s, especially in Delhi's unauthorised colonies and on DDA leasehold flats where a transfer needed permission and fees, buyers paid the full price and received a bundle of papers: an agreement to sell, an irrevocable GPA and a will in their favour. No sale deed, no full stamp duty. Houses then changed hands three or four times on the same kind of paper.
In Suraj Lamp & Industries v State of Haryana (2011), the Supreme Court held that these SA/GPA/Will transactions are not sales and don't convey title. The documents can support a suit for specific performance or a regularisation claim, but the holder isn't the owner. The court made it clear that genuine GPAs given to a spouse, relative or manager to run a property are unaffected.
Delhi's PM-UDAY scheme for unauthorised colonies, launched in 2019, gave residents holding GPA-type papers a route to conveyance deeds or authorisation slips, which shows how many families still hold property this way. If you're offered a GPA property at a discount, price in the cost and time of regularisation or getting a proper deed from the original owner, or walk away.
A Laxmi Nagar flat 'bought' in 2006 for ₹14 lakh through a GPA, agreement to sell and will is still legally the seller's. If his heirs refuse to sign a sale deed today, the holder has to go to court on those papers instead of simply selling on.
Treating the will in the bundle as protection. A will can be replaced by a later will at any time and takes effect only on death, so it gives a buyer nothing certain.
Questions people ask about general power of attorney (GPA)
Is a GPA sale valid after 2011?
It doesn't transfer ownership. The papers can back a claim for specific performance or a regularisation scheme, but a clean title needs a registered sale deed.
Will a bank give a home loan on a GPA property?
Most won't, because the seller has no registered title to mortgage. That alone pulls down the resale value of GPA properties.