Certified copies of public documents
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Summary
A public officer who keeps a public document that any person has a right to inspect must, on demand and on payment of the legal fee, give a copy with a certificate at its foot saying it is a true copy. The certificate must be dated and signed with the officer's name and official title, and sealed where the officer may use a seal. Such copies are certified copies.
Example
Priya asks the revenue clerk for a copy of her village land record and pays the prescribed fee. The clerk must give her a copy with a certificate at the foot saying it is a true copy, dated and signed with his name and official title, and sealed if he is authorised. Priya thus gets a certified copy she can use where a certified copy is required.
Bare Act
Enacted textEvery public officer having the custody of a public document, which any person has a right to inspect, shall give that person on demand a copy of it on payment of the legal fees therefore, together with a certificate written at the foot of such copy that it is true copy of such document or part thereof, as the case may be and such certificate shall be dated and subscribed by such officer with his name and his official title, and shall be sealed, whenever such officer is authorised by law to make use of a seal; and such copies so certified shall be called certified copies.
Explanations
Any officer who, by the ordinary course of official duty, is authorized to deliver such copies, shall be deemed to have the custody of such documents within the meaning of this section.
- A village-officer in the Punjab has been declared for the purposes of this Act to be a public officer having the custody of a public document-see the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 (17 of 1887), section, 151 (2).
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