Almost everything in India can be done by an agent, and almost every power of attorney sent from abroad fails on process rather than substance.
The sequence that holds up: draft a specific power of attorney naming the exact property, the exact acts permitted and the person permitted to do them. Execute it before the Indian mission in your country, or before a local notary followed by an apostille if that country is party to the Hague Convention. Courier the original to India. Have it stamped there within three months of receipt, as Section 18 of the Indian Stamp Act requires. Where it relates to the sale of immovable property, register it.
A general power of attorney, drafted broadly to save trouble, tends to create it — banks and sub-registrars read them narrowly and reject what is not spelt out.
On a bank account, the limits are written down
Property is only half of it. Most powers of attorney sent from abroad also cover an account, and there the Reserve Bank has set the boundary itself.
On an NRE or FCNR(B) account, operations under a power of attorney are "restricted to withdrawals for permissible local payments or remittance to the account holder himself through normal banking channels."
On an NRO account the holder may do that and one thing more — "remittance of current income to the account holder outside India" — and the Reserve Bank adds that while making remittances, the limits and conditions of repatriability apply.
Read both lists for what is missing. Your holder can pay bills in India and send money to you. They cannot send it to anyone else abroad, and they cannot make a gift of it. Writing a wider power does not widen the account.
Joint holding rules for NRI accounts
- Specific beats general, every time.
- On an account, the holder may pay bills in India and remit to you — nobody else.
- Stamp within three months of the document arriving in India.
- Say in the deed how and when the authority ends.
Source: the Powers-of-Attorney Act, 1882 and the Registration Act, 1908. A deed executed outside India must be stamped within three months of the day it first arrives in India, under the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 or the stamp law of the state where it is used; in practice it is either authenticated at an Indian mission abroad or apostilled, since India is party to the Hague Apostille Convention. Banks and sub-registrars apply their own additional requirements on top. What a holder may do with an account is the "Operations by Power of Attorney in favour of a resident" row of Q3 in the Reserve Bank of India's FAQ Accounts in India by Non-residents, as on 16 January 2025. Checked 22 September 2026.