Won’t get e-stamp paper up to Rs100 anymore

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Jhajjar, May 10

Now, residents will not be able to generate non-judicial stamp papers of small denomination online through the e-stamping system. The state government has stopped issuing e-stamp papers up to Rs100 denomination due to security reasons.

The stamp papers would be available in print and people would now have to approach stamp vendors to buy these. Stamp papers having denomination above Rs100 would continue to be issued through e-stamping system.

“Keeping in view the security of small denomination non-judicial stamp paper, it has been decided that treasuries and sub-treasuries will issue non-judicial stamp papers and special adhesive stamps up to Rs100 denomination to vendors. This will enable vendors to sell papers and stamps to the public,” stated Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) in a recent letter sent to DCs and SDMs of all districts.

Sources said e-stamping was made imperative in the state from March 1 in order to provide a hassle-free, citizen-centric and secure way to make payment of non-judicial stamp duty, besides bringing in more transparency and efficiency to the whole stamping process.

Initially, e-stamping was made mandatory with effect from May 1, 2016, in Gurugram, Faridabad, Sonepat and Panchkula districts in the first phase. The government implemented the system in all other districts from March 1, 2017.

“Since stamp papers of small denomination are in a high demand across the state, citizens and vendors had to face problems in generating stamp papers online due to huge traffic on the e-stamping portal. People had to wait unnecessarily to get stamp papers worth up to Rs100. This is one of the reasons behind the move,” said a senior official of the Revenue Department. He said the government wanted to utilise a large quantity of such stamp papers which had gone out of use after the launch of the e-stamping system throughout the state. These stamp papers would now be brought back in use, he added.

Sources said the e-stamping system had been turning out to be a gainful proposition for stamp vendors as they were charging between Rs 20 and Rs 30 per stamp paper worth Rs 10 from customers.

They had been claiming that they paid tax on generating e-stamp papers. As per rules, vendors could not charge more than the value of the stamp paper as they got 3 per cent commission on the value of stamp paper.

Advocate Ashok Kadian hailed the government’s move, stating that people, especially in rural areas, had been facing hardship in getting stamp papers online due to lack of Internet skill. Vendors had been charging much more than the value of stamp papers from them, he pointed out.

Neha Saharan, Jhajjar tehsildar, confirmed that stamp papers up to Rs 100 denomination would now be available in print as the government had stopped issuing e-stamp papers.