How to Cancel a GPA in Karnataka: Revocation, Registration and the Coupled-with-Interest Exception

An owner in Bengaluru gives a relative a GPA to handle a property sale. Months later the relationship breaks down, or the sale is called off, and the owner wants the authority back. Revoking a Power of Attorney in Karnataka is a short, mechanical exercise in the ordinary case. In one specific case — the GPA coupled with interest — it cannot be done at the Sub-Registrar's counter at all, and principals discover this only when the registrar refuses their cancellation deed.

First question: is the GPA revocable at all?

A Power of Attorney is a contract of agency, and the Indian Contract Act, 1872 governs how it ends. Section 201 lets a principal revoke the agent's authority at any time. That covers the ordinary GPA — a pure grant of authority, given for convenience, with nothing owed to the attorney.

Section 202 carves out the exception. Where the agent has an interest in the property that forms the subject-matter of the agency, the agency cannot be terminated to the prejudice of that interest. In property practice this is the GPA given after money has changed hands — alongside an agreement to sell, or to a developer under a joint development agreement, or as security for a loan. That GPA is 'coupled with interest', and the principal cannot simply take it back.

How to revoke an ordinary GPA in Karnataka

Revocation is done by a deed, not by a phone call or a lawyer's letter alone. The sequence:

• Draft a deed of cancellation (also called a deed of revocation) identifying the GPA precisely — its date, the parties, and if registered, the registration number and the Sub-Registrar's office.
• Register the cancellation deed. Where the GPA itself was registered, present the cancellation at the same Sub-Registrar's office so both instruments sit on the same index.
• Serve written notice of the revocation on the attorney, with proof of delivery.
• Tell the world: a public notice in one English and one Kannada newspaper, intimation to the Sub-Registrar's office where the property falls, and direct notice to anyone dealing with the attorney — tenants, banks, the housing society.

The last step is not optional courtesy. Under Section 208 of the Contract Act, revocation takes effect against the attorney only when it becomes known to him, and against third parties only when it becomes known to them. An attorney who transacts with a bona fide third party after revocation but before notice can still bind the principal. The cancellation deed protects you on paper; the notices protect you in the world.

You do not have to warn the attorney first

Principals often assume the attorney must consent, or at least be heard, before a cancellation can be registered. The Karnataka High Court has held otherwise: the registering authority is not required to issue notice to the attorney before registering a deed of cancellation of a GPA. Revocation of an ordinary GPA is the principal's unilateral act. If the attorney claims the revocation wrongs him, his remedy is to sue — not to block registration.

The GPA the Sub-Registrar cannot cancel

The same line of Karnataka authority draws the boundary. In Smt. Madhumati v. State of Karnataka (W.P. No. 103965/2023, Karnataka High Court, Dharwad Bench, decided 9 October 2023), a principal presented a cancellation deed for a GPA she had given her husband. The Sub-Registrar at Ramdurg declined to register it on the ground that the GPA was coupled with interest, and the High Court upheld the refusal. Cancelling a GPA coupled with interest amounts to rescission of a contract — a judicial function. A Sub-Registrar has no power to perform it.

The remedy in that situation is a civil suit — for cancellation or rescission under the Specific Relief Act, 1963 — where the attorney gets a hearing and a court decides whether the claimed interest is genuine and whether the instrument should stand. A principal who tries to shortcut this with a unilateral cancellation deed invites exactly the writ litigation Madhumati produced.

What happens to what the attorney already did

Revocation operates prospectively. Acts the attorney validly performed while the GPA subsisted — a lease signed, a sale deed executed, consideration received — bind the principal and are not undone by the later cancellation. If the attorney exceeded the authority, or the underlying act was itself tainted, that is challenged on its own footing, not through the revocation. What the cancellation deed controls is the future: after notice, the attorney signs nothing more in your name.

Death revokes automatically

An ordinary GPA ends by operation of law when the principal dies — Section 201 again. No cancellation deed is needed and none is possible. The practical work falls to the heirs: notify the Sub-Registrar and anyone dealing with the attorney, because a sale deed executed on a dead principal's GPA is void, and instruments of exactly that kind keep surfacing in Karnataka title disputes. The Registration (Karnataka Amendment) Act, 2025 now attacks this from the other end, requiring proof that the principal is alive whenever a POA is used in a registration — covered in our companion post on the new GPA registration rules.

If you need to revoke a GPA, or someone has purported to revoke one you hold, WhatsApp a copy of the instrument to +91 63637 45780 and we will explain whether it is revocable, the correct route, and the notices that need to go out.