Token Advance Receipt (Bayana Rasid)

Stamp duty

There are two questions here, and the answer to the second one is different in Punjab and in Chandigarh. First, as a plain acknowledgement of money this document is chargeable under Article 53 of Schedule I to the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 — one rupee, by a revenue stamp affixed and signed across, where the sum received exceeds Rs 5,000. Receipts are a Union subject, so that one-rupee figure is identical at a counter in Ludhiana and at a counter in Sector 17, and neither the Punjab Government nor the Chandigarh Administration can vary it. Section 30 of the Act obliges the person who takes the money to give a duly stamped receipt if he is asked for one, so the Payer is entitled to demand this paper. Second, and this is what actually costs money: a token receipt that also records the price, the property and a timetable can be assessed as an agreement relating to the sale of immovable property rather than as a receipt. In Chandigarh the figure is published and it is unusually easy to work out. Item 22 of the Stamp Duty and Registration Fees schedule of the Office of the Sub-Registrar, U.T. Chandigarh (revenue.chd.gov.in/SRORegistrationFee.pdf, retrieved 6 September 2026) charges an agreement to sell at 5 per cent of the token or earnest money — not of the sale price. A bayana of Rs 5,00,000 therefore carries Rs 25,000 of stamp duty on the Agreement to Sell that follows. The registration fee on ad valorem items there is 1 per cent capped at Rs 10,000 and the pasting fee is Rs 20. That schedule carries no date and no notification number on its face, and the site footer is years old, but its figures agreed exactly with the Administration's own live stamp duty calculator at revenue.chd.gov.in/StampDuty.aspx when the calculator was run on 6 September 2026, which returned 5.00 per cent on a conveyance. Note that many property portals print 6 per cent for Chandigarh; the Administration's published table and its own calculator both say 5 per cent, a Tribune explainer of 28 March 2026 agrees, and no notification moving between the two could be found. Confirm it at the Sub-Registrar, 30 Bays Building, Sector 17, before you rely on any calculator output. In Punjab you must ask at the counter, because the one figure this receipt turns on is not published. What the Department of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management does publish, in its 'Document wise detail of Stamp Duty, Registration Fee and Facilitation charges' (revenue.punjab.gov.in, retrieved 6 September 2026; the table bears no date and carries no section numbers), is the sale side: 5 per cent stamp duty, a 1 per cent Social Infrastructure Cess and a 1 per cent Punjab Infrastructure Development Board fee, with the registration fee at 1 per cent capped at Rs 2,00,000, pasting Rs 200, mutation Rs 600, and facilitation charges of Rs 1,000 up to Rs 10 lakh consideration, Rs 3,000 for Rs 10 to 30 lakh and Rs 5,000 above Rs 30 lakh. The statutory hooks for the two add-ons are section 3-D of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 as applied to Punjab for the cess, and sections 25 and 25-A of the Punjab Infrastructure (Development and Regulation) Act, 2002 for the Board fee; the departmental table itself cites neither. A third add-on, a Special Infrastructure Development Fee of 25 paise per hundred rupees, is levied under those same sections 25 and 25-A and was confirmed as a standing levy by Notification No. S.O. 25/P.A.8/2002/Ss.25 and 25-A/2023 dated 28 February 2023, which suspended it and the Board fee for the month of March 2023 only — the Revenue Minister described the waived package at the time as '1 per cent additional stamp duty, 1 per cent fee and 0.25 per cent special fee'. That third fee does not appear on the departmental table, which therefore implies 7 per cent where the gazette implies 7.25 per cent. Carry the components separately in your budget, allow for 7.25 per cent, and ask at the counter which of the two you are actually being charged. What is NOT published anywhere is the rate for an agreement to sell in Punjab. Entries 5(c) and 5(cc) both exist in Punjab's Schedule I-A, 5(cc) being an agreement to sell that is followed by or evidences delivery of possession, and the departmental fee table has no agreement line on it at all. The common practice — that 5(cc) is charged at the conveyance rate under entry 23 — is consistent with the wording of the entry but could not be verified against a notification, and no rate for 5(c), the agreement without possession, could be sourced at all. Ask for both figures at the Sub-Registrar's counter, where the Tehsildar sits as Sub-Registrar ex officio and the Naib Tehsildar as Joint Sub-Registrar, before you decide what paper to print on. This template is deliberately drafted so that no possession passes (Clause 12), which keeps it a receipt and keeps entry 5(cc) out of the picture. The cheap insurance is to print it on non-judicial stamp paper of Rs 100 or Rs 500 anyway; it removes the argument for the price of a takeaway lunch. Buying that paper: e-stamping is live in both jurisdictions through Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd as Central Record Keeping Agency (shcilestamp.com; regional office SCO 154-155, 2nd Floor, Deepak Tower Building, Sector 17-C, Chandigarh), and in both a citizen may pay online and print the certificate himself. The practical catch is denomination. Punjab's appointing notification, No. 24/201/07-ST.2 dated 30 October 2014, has SHCIL issuing e-stamp certificates for amounts exceeding Rs 49,999, so for a Rs 100 or Rs 500 paper in Punjab you go to a licensed stamp vendor. Chandigarh publishes a separate 'Application form for Lower Denomination Stamp Duty payment' for amounts up to Rs 200 alongside the form for Rs 201 and above, so a small e-stamp can be bought there directly. Punjab has also locked e-Stamp Certificates left unused for more than four months and e-Registration Receipts left unused for more than one month, by Stamp and Registration Branch order No. 07/15/2026-ST-2(PF-1)/10837 dated 11 July 2026 — do not buy the paper months before you sign. Why any of this matters: under section 35 of the Indian Stamp Act an instrument that is not duly stamped cannot be received in evidence at all, and if the bayana is ever disputed this receipt is the whole of your evidence. A deficiency can be cured afterwards by impounding and paying the duty with penalty, and the ten-times figure in section 35 is a ceiling rather than a tariff; what the counters and the courts here actually charge as penalty for under-stamping could not be established from any published source, so treat the ceiling as the planning figure and take advice if a deficiency is found.

Registration

Not registrable, and there is no threshold to worry about. An acknowledgement of money is not one of the documents listed in section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908, so there is nothing to present and no time limit to meet. Keep the original with the Payer. Three things that come after it are registrable, and the deadline in Clause 6.1 has to be long enough for them. An Agreement to Sell under which the buyer is put into possession — the kind relied on under section 53A of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 — must be registered under section 17(1A), and if it is not registered it gives the buyer no protection whatever. Clause 12 of this receipt hands over no possession precisely so that the question does not arise before the agreement is drawn. A lease from year to year, for any term exceeding one year, or reserving a yearly rent, must be registered under section 17(1)(d). An eleven-month tenancy stays outside that. A term of exactly twelve months is outside the words of the section, but it is routinely treated at the counter as registrable, and a lease reserving a yearly rent is registrable whatever its length — do not build a tenancy on the twelve-month margin. The Sale Deed itself must be registered. In Punjab you present it to the Sub-Registrar — the Tehsildar of the tehsil sitting ex officio, with the Naib Tehsildar as Joint Sub-Registrar and the Deputy Commissioner as Registrar of the district, under the Inspector General of Registration at Jalandhar — and the appointment is booked on easyregistry.punjab.gov.in, the Easy Registry portal (NGDRS 3.0). The Department of Revenue describes online registration as implemented in every Sub Registrar Office of twenty-two districts, while its own land records portal at jamabandi.punjab.gov.in lists twenty-three districts in the State; both pages were read on 6 September 2026, and the sensible course is to confirm that the particular office is on the portal rather than to assume it. The registration fee is 1 per cent of the value of the document with a minimum of Rs 50 and a maximum of Rs 2,00,000, under Notification No. S.O. 11/C.A.16/1908/Ss.78 and 79/Amd./2019 dated 4 February 2019 (Punjab Government Gazette, 15 February 2019); pasting is Rs 200 and the mutation fee Rs 600. Registration of a sale deed is a one-day notified service under the Punjab Transparency and Accountability in Delivery of Public Services Act, 2018, and a certified copy afterwards is seven days. Registration then generates the Parcha Yadasht that goes to the Tehsildar's office and starts the intkal before the Circle Revenue Officer, for which the notified limit for an uncontested mutation is forty-five days; the Easy Jamabandi launch of 13 June 2025 promised thirty, and it is not established which of the two a citizen can appeal on. In Chandigarh you present it to the Sub-Registrar, U.T. Chandigarh, 30 Bays Building, Ground Floor, Room Nos. 1 and 2, near the Estate Office (Old Building) adjoining the Central State Library, Sector 17, Chandigarh 160017. That office is entirely cashless. The registration fee is 1 per cent capped at Rs 10,000 and pasting is Rs 20; the portal is ngdrs.chd.gov.in/NGDRS_CH with the citizen-facing services on revenue.chd.gov.in, live since the changeover of 16 January 2025. Since 2025 the Estate Office mutates automatically off the registered deed and there is no separate mutation application at all, which means the affidavit and indemnity pack must be complete and correct at the Sub-Registrar's counter, because there is no later filing at which to repair it. Sale, gift, exchange and family transfer deeds go in triplicate. For a leasehold site the Estate Office no-objection certificate must already be in hand and one-third of the unearned increase already dealt with under Rule 7(ii) of the Chandigarh Estate Rules, 2007 — the notified Right to Service limit for that no-objection certificate is fifty days, from Chandigarh Administration, Department of Personnel Notification No. 28/67/1-IH(9)-2026/73238 dated 30 March 2026, and time runs only from a complete application. Time limits if you do register something: four months from execution to present it under section 23 of the Registration Act, 1908, and a further four months under section 25 on payment of a fine of up to ten times the proper registration fee. One exception to remember about Chandigarh: the sector property described above has no jamabandi, but Chandigarh's own revenue villages and the lal dora and phirni areas around Manimajra do have one, maintained by the Chandigarh Revenue Department at revenue.chd.gov.in, and the registration checklist there calls for a fard and a Naib Tehsildar's report. If the Property is village land rather than a sector site, ask which checklist applies.

Notarisation

Not required by law. This receipt is valid and enforceable once it is signed by the parties, stamped, and preferably witnessed. Notarisation before a notary appointed under the Notaries Act, 1952 is optional and is commonly done for comfort, because it creates an independent record of the date and of who appeared before the notary. Be clear about what it does not do: it does not register the document, it does not cure a stamp duty shortfall, and it does not make an unenforceable term enforceable. If you are choosing between paying for notarisation and paying for proper stamp paper, buy the stamp paper. Ask the notary for the serial number of the entry in his notarial register and write it on your copy. That register entry, not the rubber stamp, is what proves the date if the notarisation is ever questioned. One local point for what comes next. The Estate Office, U.T. Chandigarh now accepts notarised affidavits in place of affidavits attested by an Executive Magistrate, except where the law or a specific policy requires otherwise, and it does not require documents already on the Estate Office record to be filed again. So the affidavit-cum-indemnity bond that has to accompany a Chandigarh sale deed at the Sub-Registrar's counter can be notarised rather than sworn before a Magistrate — which matters, because with auto-mutation running off the registered deed there is no second chance to file it.

Witnesses

Not legally required for this receipt. No statute demands attesting witnesses for an acknowledgement of money — the two-witness rule belongs to instruments such as a gift deed under section 123 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 and a will under section 63 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, not to this. Two witnesses are still strongly recommended and the template provides for them, for a hard practical reason: a bayana dispute is almost always one person's word against another's, and a witness who can be produced before the Civil Judge to say the money changed hands is worth more than the wording of any clause. Use witnesses who are adults of sound mind, ideally not related to either party, and record their full names, postal addresses and telephone numbers — a witness you cannot summon three years later is no witness at all. Look ahead to the registration counter as well. Both the Sub-Registrar in Punjab and the Sub-Registrar, U.T. Chandigarh register a deed on the National Generic Document Registration System, which captures photographs and thumb impressions of both parties and of two identifying witnesses, each with photo identity and Aadhaar. Picking witnesses now who can actually travel to Sector 17, or to the tehsil, on the day of registration saves a wasted appointment and a fresh slot. Both parties should sign every page of this receipt, and the Receiver should sign across the revenue stamp so that the stamp cannot be lifted and reused.