SHILLONG, AUG 9: The state government on Tuesday decided to extend the implementation of the e-stamping project to three more districts which include West Jaintia Hills, West Garo Hills and Ri Bhoi.
The decision was taken after the cabinet approved the amendment of the Meghalaya Stamps (Payment of Duty by means of e-Stamping) Rules, 2020.
The e-stamping project was initially started in East Khasi Hills district with only one counter in the Deputy Commissioner’s office which was operated by the Central Records keeping Agency (CRA).
The project had shown a lot of positive response from citizens in terms of the ease of doing business especially for high denomination non-judicial stamp papers.
“Based on this experience over these few years, we have decided and found it necessary to extend the implementation to the other districts like West Jaintia Hills, West Garo Hills, Ri Bhoi and with the ultimate aim that we will be able to extend this to all the districts of the state,” Taxation minister James K Sangma told reporters after the meeting.
He informed the CRA had suggested that the implementation of the project in other districts may be made through the appointment of authorized collection centres (ACCs) which will be duly approved by the government.
This will increase the penetration of the services and make it more widespread and also improve the ease of doing business especially for other districts in the state.
Sangma however said that the CRA had pointed out that the commission charge was very low. It was to the tune of 0.65 per cent of the stamp duty collected and CRA on top of it had to share this with the ACC as a part of the said commission as the ACC has to provide the computer hardware the consumables, manpower for the project, it was found out not to be commercially viable for implementation of the project
Citing the examples being carried out in other states like Karnataka, Assam, Tripura etc, he said if we look closer to home in the North East, a nominal stationery or a service charge is being allowed to the ACC for the purpose of e-Stamping.
“So what we have decided in our state is that for non-judicial stamp paper of denomination of up to Rs 1,000 and service charge would be levied of Rs 10 and for non-judicial stamp paper of denomination exceeding Rs 1,000 a service charge will be levied to the tune of Rs 20,” he informed.
To improve the ease of doing business, the minister said, “It was also considered necessary to provide direct access to the portal of the CRA for the citizens to make purchases of the non-judicial stamp paper and for this purpose we have also brought amendments.”
The amendments stated: “that any person may directly log into the designated portal of the CRA and directly pay the amount of e-Stamp certificate not exceeding Rs 500. So we are increasing it to Rs 500 in denomination after registering in the system and the CRA shall after prompting the purchaser to verify the correctness of the entry form 4 provided in the downloading facility for the e-Stamp certificate.”
By Our Reporter
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