Bombay High Court quashes a 'deemed conveyance' order for failing to record reasons

The Bombay High Court set aside an order of the District Deputy Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Mumbai, granting 'deemed conveyance' of a Vile Parle plot to a housing society, because the order failed to address the objector's material submissions or record reasons for rejecting them. The application for deemed conveyance, filed in 2021, had already been heard and decided twice before; on an earlier occasion the High Court had remitted it to the Registrar with an express direction to record reasoned findings on the parties' submissions. Even so, the fresh order again did not engage with several of the objector's specific contentions.

Justice Farhan P. Dubash held that a quasi-judicial authority deciding such an application must consider the material placed before it and give reasons for accepting or rejecting a party's case; reasons are what let the parties understand why they won or lost and let a court meaningfully review the decision on appeal or in writ jurisdiction. An order that omits reasons on points central to the dispute cannot be sustained merely because it reaches a plausible result. The court remitted the application to the Registrar for a third round, directing a fresh, reasoned decision after hearing all parties, to be completed by 31 March 2027, and expressly kept open every contention on the merits, including whether the society is entitled to deemed conveyance at all.