Punjab buckles under farmers’ pressure, defers stamp duty on land transfers among blood relatives

On Wednesday, Balbir Singh Rajewal of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha warned that farmer organisations would oppose the stamp duty “tooth and nail”.

The government did not want to give farmers any reason to protest against it, the source added.

The cash-strapped government had decided to impose a 2.5 per cent stamp duty on the transfer of property among blood relatives. As per the proposal, direct transfers from parents to children (sons and daughters) and grandparents to grandchildren would require a stamp duty of 1 per cent, while all other transfers, including those between brothers, sisters and spouses, would incur a stamp duty of 2.5 per cent.

Official sources had said the stamp duty would have generated a few crores of rupees in revenue for the government. “The transfer of property among blood relations has many takers as it does not have any duty. We observed that parents transferred property to their children’s names, and the same property was transferred back. This transfer was shown as a sale deed to mortgage it in a bank for a loan. At least 25 per cent of sale deeds were found to be among blood relatives. The revenue staff was busy dealing with these transfers. With the government now levying stamp duty, only serious transfers will be made,” a government official had said.

It remains to be seen whether the government will take up the agenda in the next cabinet meeting or if it has been postponed indefinitely.

It was in 2014 that the stamp duty on the transfer of land among blood relatives was eliminated, by the SAD-BJP government. According to a government notification dated May 7, 2014, no stamp duty was chargeable on instruments pertaining to the transfer of immovable property by an owner during their lifetime to any of their blood relations (i.e., children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters). Transfers between spouses were also exempt.