Cuttack: A registering authority cannot refuse to register a document acknowledging an adoption by questioning whether the adoption ceremony actually took place or scrutinising discrepancies in identity records, the Orissa high court has ruled. Determining the validity of an adoption is the domain of a competent civil court, not a registration officer, the court stated.Setting aside orders of the sub-registrar, Simulia, and the additional district magistrate-cum-district registrar, Balasore, Justice Sashikanta Mishra directed the registering authority to register a deed acknowledging an adoption within three days of receiving a certified copy of the Nov 6 judgment, subject to fulfilment of statutory requirements.“The registering authority is not vested with the jurisdiction of a civil court and cannot assume an adjudicatory role in determining disputed questions of right, title or legal entitlement,” Justice Mishra observed.The case arose from a petition filed by Kamala Jena, whose son, Kamala Kanta Mandal, was allegedly given in adoption to Bhaskar Mandal and his wife Laxmi Mandal in March 2001, when he was around nine years old. An adoption ceremony was performed at the adoptive parents’ residence, but no formal deed was executed then.In Sept 2025, the natural parents, adoptive mother and the adoptee executed a deed acknowledging the adoption and approached the sub-registrar for registration. However, registration was refused, citing absence of contemporaneous evidence, lack of independent witnesses, discrepancies in identity records and the fact that the adoptee’s school-leaving certificate continued to mention his natural father’s name. His Aadhaar card had been modified only in 2014, when he was around 22 years old.The district registrar subsequently upheld the refusal, prompting the writ petition.Disapproving the authorities’ approach, the high court said the document was intended only to record an adoption claimed to have taken place in 2001 and not to effect a fresh adoption in 2025. The registering officer’s duty was to examine its admissibility under the Registration Act, 1908, rather than test the adoption’s validity under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956.“These circumstances may constitute matters for appreciation of evidence in an appropriate civil proceeding, but cannot, by themselves, confer on the registering authority the jurisdiction to adjudicate on the validity or otherwise of the adoption,” Justice Mishra ruled.The judge also clarified that registration would neither conclusively establish the adoption nor prevent any aggrieved person from challenging its validity before a civil court.