Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB)’s flagship project e-Stamping has shown remarkable results in the shortest span of time. The experimental operation launched six months ago has touched the figure of Rs11.064 billion till the closing time today.
A number of 571,740 people visited the website while 5,16,723 vouchers were paid and a number of 4,17,963 e-Stamp papers were issued. Dr Umar Saif, advisor to CM Punjab & Chairman PITB lauded the untiring efforts of all the stakeholders i.e. Board of Revenue, respective banks and the team of PITB while congratulating the officials on Wednesday.
The Chairman PITB while expressing his gratitude to the Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif for his continuous support and guidance in the completion of the project said that e-Stamping was a step towards generating revenue through technology in transparently and to eradicate the chances of financial pilferage through an efficient and accountable system.
It has saved the common citizen from fraud, forgery, agent mafia, long queues in the treasury office and the banks as the duration of receiving stamp papers have been reduced from three days to fifteen minutes, which is now operative in the whole Punjab’s 36 districts and 144 tehsils, he added.
The e-Stamping system has replaced 117 years old Stamp paper system introduced in 1899 in the Sub-continent during the colonial rule. The newly introduced system is online and any person desirous of purchasing high value non-judicial/judicial stamp paper can access the system by a simple internet connection.
The value of stamp duty will be calculated on the basis of data provided by the buyer (area of the land, location, covered area, commercial/residential etc) and DC valuation tables built into the system.
The names of the buyer, seller and the person through whom stamps are being purchased will be entered into the system along with their CNIC numbers. The system has empowered the common man to verify the authenticity and value of the e-Stamp paper by sending the inbuilt number through SMS on 8100.
Challan form 32-A will now be generated based on the above data and buyer of the stamp paper can go to the nearest branch of the designated bank. This challan form, 32-A, can be generated by the citizens or from the bank or sub-registrar office.
On the payment of stamp duty, the bank counter will print the e-stamp paper on especially designed legal size paper. This stamp paper will be submitted to the sub-Registrar/housing society/ authority/ land developers, depending on the usage. These authorities will be provided limited access to the database of e-Stamping where they will be able to verify e-Stamp paper, thus eliminating any chances of usage of fake stamps.
On utilisation of the stamp paper, these authorities will inform the system and the same entry in the database will be delisted, which will restrict the re-use of e-stamp paper.
There are two types of stamps: judicial and non-judicial, used for collecting stamp duty under Stamp Act, 1899. The judicial stamps are used for the administration of justice in courts and non-judicial stamps are used on documents related to the transfer of property, commercial agreements etc.
The non-judicial stamp papers worth above Rs1,000 are referred as high-value stamp papers. These stamp papers are only issued by the treasury offices of the district. Almost 95.89pc of the revenue under stamp duty is collected from these high-value stamps. The issuance of judicial e-stamp papers was also launched on December 23, 2016.
In order to facilitate the public, besides stamp duty, capital value tax, registration and comparison fees will also be collected through the same challan.