The Registrar's Powers, Evidence and Preliminary Advice

In one line

Chapter X gives the Registrar a civil court's evidence powers, a duty to hear before deciding against an applicant, affidavit evidence as the default, and the power to extend time, treat an application as abandoned, and give preliminary advice on originality.

Section 72: the powers of a civil court

In all proceedings under the Act before the Registrar he has, by section 72,

• (a) all the powers of a civil court for the purposes of receiving evidence, administering oaths, enforcing the attendance of witnesses, compelling the discovery and production of documents, and issuing commissions for the examination of witnesses;
• (b) power, subject to rules made under section 96, to make such orders as to costs as he considers reasonable, and such an order is "executable as decree to a civil court"; and
• (c) power, on an application made in the prescribed manner, to review his own decision.

Three notes.

The list in clause (a) is a list of five purposes, not a general grant. He is a civil court for those purposes. He does not thereby become a court for other purposes, and he cannot try a suit.

Clause (b) makes a costs order enforceable as a decree. So the successful opponent in a section 11 opposition, or the successful respondent in a section 26 rectification, can execute the costs order in the civil court without suing on it.

Clause (c) is a power of review, in the Registrar himself. That matters, because it is the cheap remedy. Compare section 42, which would send an appeal from the Registrar to the Appellate Board but has never been brought into force, and chapter 820 on that Board. With no appellate body under the Act, section 72(c) review and a writ under Article 226 are what an aggrieved applicant has.

Section 73: the duty to hear before deciding adversely

The provision. "Subject to the provisions of section 76, the Registrar shall not exercise any discretionary or other power vested in him by this Act or the rules made thereunder adversely to a person applying for the exercise of the power without (if so required by that person within the prescribed time) giving to the person an opportunity of being heard."

Read the three qualifications.

One: it protects only the person applying for the exercise of the power. Not everyone affected. So an opponent under section 11 relies on section 11's own procedure, not on section 73.

Two: the hearing must be asked for, within the prescribed time. The right is not automatic. It is a right to be heard if so required. An applicant who does not ask within the prescribed time loses it under this section, though the ordinary rules of natural justice may still be argued.