The acute shortage of ₹100 non-judicial stamp papers, essential for executing all kinds of agreements between individuals as well as between individuals and institutions, has not yet ebbed in the State.
In spite of the authorities’ recent temporary measure of ‘revalidating’ ₹10 stamp papers into ₹100 papers, they have not been able to meet the demand. Most private stamp vendors are not able to provide the ₹100 papers.
“For executing a legally valid agreement of any kind, you need it to be written or printed on two ₹100 stamp papers,” says P. Uthaman, a former sub-registrar who now runs a document writing business in Kozhikode.
“But for the past two-three months, ₹100 papers are unavailable with the treasury authorities.”
Even the revalidated stamp papers are in short supply; very few stamp vendors get the supplies. “As a result,” points out Munshid Ali, a member of the Calicut Chamber of Commerce, “those who urgently need the papers have to either buy ₹500 papers or wait in line for the revalidated ₹10 papers in front of the treasuries for a long time.”
Financial year’s end
Stamp vendors and government treasury officials said that the shortage had been going on for two months now, but it had peaked in the second half of last month. March, the crucial month for the government and local self-government institutions for completing a large number of projects, contracts and welfare schemes, was really tough because the required stamp papers were not available.
This has also been a blow mainly to the real estate sector, banks and a host of businesses.
T.C. Prabhakaran, State treasurer of the Kerala State Stamp Vendors Association, told The Hindu that though the authorities had recently started issuing the revalidated papers, these were far too low to meet the demand.
The ₹10 papers needed to be stamped and signed by responsible officers manually.
Though two officers at the district level were authorised to do this, it was physically impossible for them to sign the required quantity.
New shipment
However, an official at the Central Stamp Depot in Thiruvananthapuram told The Hindu that the situation would ease in a month.
A new shipment of stamp papers from Nashik and Hyderabad units of the Central Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India, a Central government company which prints currency notes and stamps, was expected soon.
The security presses usually send their shipments every six months depending on the requirements placed by each State in advance. The Kerala authorities had sought only one half-yearly shipment last year.
It seems the authorities had anticipated a fall in the demand in view of the e-stamping put in place for stamp duty of more than ₹1 lakh.
Why not e-payment?
Vendors said one major reason for the uptick in the demand for ₹100 stamp was the government’s doubling of the stamp value for agreements from ₹100 to ₹200, without making one-piece ₹200 stamps available.
Mr. Munshid Ali said that in this age of online payments, it was ridiculous that the government still used the age-old stamp paper.
