Power of attorney for NRI property owners: the version that works

Almost every non-resident owner we take on arrives with the same instrument: a general power of attorney, executed years ago, in favour of a brother, a cousin or a family friend, granting broad authority over property with no defined scope and no end date.

It is understandable. It is also the most common single cause of the disputes we are asked to unwind.

Why the general POA fails

• Scope. A general POA typically authorises sale, mortgage and lease without limit, which means the holder can do things the owner never contemplated and the owner has limited recourse after the fact.
• Duration. It usually has no expiry, so it survives the relationship that justified it.
• Registration. Many are unregistered or improperly attested, which means they fail at the sub-registrar’s office at the exact moment they are needed.
• Revocation. Revoking a POA the holder does not wish to surrender is slow, public and expensive.

The instrument that works

A special power of attorney, drafted for a specific transaction, with a stated expiry.

It names the property by survey number, states exactly which acts are authorised, names the counterparty where known, and expires on a date. It is executed before the Indian consulate in the country of residence, then adjudicated and stamped in Telangana within three months of arrival in India.

The sequence

• Draft in India, against the specific transaction and the specific property.
• Send the draft abroad for execution before the Indian consulate or a notary in a Hague Convention country, with apostille where applicable.
• Courier the executed original to India.
• Adjudicate and pay stamp duty in Telangana within three months of the document arriving.
• Register where the transaction requires a registered instrument — sale of immovable property does.

Three weeks end to end is realistic if the draft is right first time. Most of the delay in practice comes from drafting a POA that the sub-registrar will not accept, discovering that at the counter, and starting again.

“A power of attorney should authorise exactly one thing and then expire. Anything broader is a liability you have handed to someone else.”

What WENS does with it

Where WENS acts under a client’s power of attorney, the scope is limited to the transaction at hand and every action taken is logged against a written instruction from the client. The instrument expires on completion. If a further transaction is needed, a further POA is drafted.