Will (Vasiyat)

Stamp duty

Nil, in both jurisdictions, and that is a published rate rather than an inference. The Government of Punjab, Department of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management, in its "Document wise detail of Stamp Duty, Registration Fee and Facilitation charges" table on revenue.punjab.gov.in, enters item 11 "Will/Cancellation of Will" at Stamp Duty — Nil (table retrieved 6 September 2026; it carries no date and no notification number on its face). The Chandigarh Administration's published "Rates of Stamp Duty & Registration Fees" table enters item 10 "WILL/Cancellation of WILL" at Nil and item 11 "DOUBLE WILL" at NIL (table retrieved 6 September 2026; the PDF was created 17 May 2020 and likewise carries no notification number). A codicil is treated the same way. So buy no stamp paper. You do not need an authorised stamp vendor, you do not need the Central Treasury, and you do not need an e-Stamp certificate — which matters in Chandigarh, where a citizen can buy an e-Stamp online through e-Sampark only up to Rs 500 and anything above Rs 50,000 must be deposited by challan at the State Bank of India, Treasury Branch, Sector 17. A Will needs none of that. Plain paper, signed and attested, is a valid Will. The ad valorem cost, if it ever comes, comes later and is a court fee, not stamp duty. If your family does have to take out probate or letters of administration, Article 11 of Schedule I to the Court Fees Act, 1870 charges the grant on the value of the estate — as the Schedule stands centrally, 2.5% where the value exceeds Rs 10,000 and does not exceed Rs 50,000, and 3% above that — and a succession certificate for debts and securities is charged separately under Article 12. That Schedule has been amended more than once for this territory. Confirm the current figure at the court-fee counter of the District Court that would hear the petition — the District Courts of your district in Punjab, or the District Courts, Sector 43, Chandigarh — before you budget for it. Watch the substance, not the title. A deed that moves anything while you are alive is a gift, a family settlement or a release however it is headed, and it is charged accordingly: a gift in Punjab attracts 5% stamp duty plus 1% Social Infrastructure Cess plus a 1% PIDB charge on the consideration or the Collector rate, whichever is higher, the Collector rate being the one published for the revenue estate by the Deputy Commissioner; in Chandigarh a gift or conveyance attracts 5% on the value or consideration, whichever is higher (the Administration's own table says 5%, though many property listings say 6% — confirm at the Sub-Registrar, 30 Bays Building, Sector 17, before relying on either), a family settlement 2%, and a transfer deed between blood relations is exempted. All of those figures were checked on 6 September 2026. None of it touches this Will, because this Will transfers nothing today.

Registration

Optional — but the two jurisdictions price it about twenty times apart, so know the figure before you set out. Both figures below were checked on 6 September 2026. Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908 does not require a Will to be registered; section 18(e) makes it optional, and an unregistered Will is completely valid. There is no time limit: the proviso to section 23 lets a Will be presented at any time, and section 29(1) lets you present it, at your option, to any Registrar or any Sub-Registrar — not only the one for the place where the property lies. After your death your executor, or a person claiming as legatee, may present it under section 40, and the officer must then satisfy himself under section 41 that you are dead, that you executed the Will, and that you were competent to do so. In Punjab, present it to the Sub-Registrar of the tehsil, or the Joint Sub-Registrar of the sub-tehsil. The Revenue Department's document-wise table puts a Will or a cancellation of a Will at a registration fee of Rs 4,000, facilitation charges of Rs 500, and the pasting fee of Rs 200 that it applies to all documents — about Rs 4,700 in all, with no stamp duty and no PIDB charge. Because that table bears no date, ask the counter to confirm the Rs 4,000 before you draw the money. On timing, be careful what you rely on: the notified one-day service under the Punjab Transparency and Accountability in Delivery of Public Services Act, 2018 is the registration of a sale, lease, power of attorney or partnership deed, and it has not been established that a Will is a notified service at all — so do not assume the Right to Service appeal ladder to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate and then the Deputy Commissioner is available for this instrument, and ask the Designated Officer in writing under which notification your Will has been taken in. A Will presented after the testator's death under sections 40 and 41 is in any event not a counter-speed transaction, because the officer has to satisfy himself of the death, the execution and the competence. What is clearly notified, and useful here, is the certified copy of a registered document at seven days; two extra days are added where you apply through a Sewa Kendra rather than the counter itself. In Chandigarh, present it to the Sub-Registrar, UT Chandigarh, 30 Bays Building, Ground Floor, Rooms 1 and 2, Sector 17 (next to the old Estate Office building, adjoining the Central State Library). The Administration's published table puts a Will or a cancellation of a Will at a registration fee of Rs 200 plus a Rs 20 pasting fee, and a Double Will at Rs 400 plus Rs 20. The office keeps narrow hours: presentation only between 12.00 noon and 1.00 pm, registration only between 3.00 and 5.00 pm, and documents collected at the counter between 9.00 and 11.00 am. Bring the Will in duplicate — the checklist requires triplicate only for a sale, transfer, gift or exchange of freehold urban property — with your photograph affixed to the deed. You do not need proof of ownership of the property for a Will; and if the property is in Chandigarh's rural belt (Manimajra, a lal dora or phirni area) you do not need a Fard or the Naib Tehsildar (Revenue)'s report either, because the checklist excepts a Will from both. Note that the exception is for registering the Will. The mutation that follows your death in a Chandigarh revenue village is a separate proceeding before the Union Territory's own revenue officers, and the Fard will be wanted there. What registration buys you is proof that a document of this content existed on that date, which makes a forgery allegation much harder to run. It proves nothing about your capacity, and a later unregistered Will still revokes a registered one. If you want more than that, sections 42 to 46 of the Registration Act let you deposit the Will in a sealed cover with the Registrar of the district — the Registrar, not the Sub-Registrar. Ask at the Deputy Commissioner's office which officer holds the Registrar's charge and what the deposit fee is, because that figure appears on neither published rate table. Probate is a separate question and the usual answer here is no. Section 213 read with section 57 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 makes probate a precondition for a Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain Will only in the towns and territories that section 57 names, and neither Punjab nor Chandigarh is among them; a Parsi testator has the benefit of the same limitation. An Indian Christian testator is the exception — section 213(1) is not cut down in the same way, so a grant is generally needed before a court will recognise a right as executor or legatee. Where a grant is sought, the petition goes to the District Judge under section 264, in the district where you ordinarily resided; the Punjab and Haryana High Court has no ordinary original civil jurisdiction, so there is no High Court petition to file. One thing registration will not do is transfer anything. For land in the Punjab revenue record the beneficiary must still report to the Halqa Patwari and obtain a mutation of inheritance sanctioned by the Circle Revenue Officer. For a Chandigarh sector property the beneficiary must apply to the Estate Office for change of ownership, since Chandigarh's automatic mutation is triggered by a registered deed and a Will is not one. For land in a Chandigarh revenue village the application goes to the Union Territory's revenue officers at the Deputy Commissioner's Office, Sector 17 — not to the Estate Office, and not to a Punjab tehsil.

Notarisation

Not required, and no substitute for anything. Validity rests on section 63 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 — your signature plus two attesting witnesses — and no notary can supply either. Notarisation adds a thin evidentiary layer: identity and a date. Do not let a notary's stamp stand in for a missing second witness, and do not confuse it with registration, which is the far more valuable step here. Be careful not to import an Estate Office habit into your Will. The Chandigarh Estate Office now accepts notarised affidavits in place of affidavits sworn before an Executive Magistrate, so Chandigarh property files are full of notarised paper and people assume a Will needs the same. It does not, and a notarised Will with only one attesting witness is still void. If you want to spend money on making this Will hard to attack, spend it here instead. For an elderly or unwell testator, a registered medical practitioner's certificate of capacity, dated the day of signing and kept with the Will, is worth more than any notarial act; so is a short video of the signing that shows both witnesses present. Do not name a doctor on the form unless the certificate is actually in your hand and will be annexed before you sign, because the clause that prints recites the certificate as a fact and annexes it as Annexure A — a recital of a certificate that is not there is the loose thread a challenger pulls on. If the Will is executed outside India, note that the Chandigarh Estate Office requires any document prepared or executed outside India and used in one of its transactions to be embossed first by the Finance Department of the Chandigarh Administration — a routine trap for a testator living abroad whose executor will later deal with a sector property.

Witnesses

Two, and they are the document. Under section 63(c) of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 each witness must have seen you sign, or received your personal acknowledgement of the signature, and each must sign in your presence. The Act does not require both to be present together; this template records that they were, so do it that way. A BEQUEST TO AN ATTESTING WITNESS, OR TO THAT WITNESS'S SPOUSE, IS VOID under section 67. The Will survives; the gift dies. Never use a beneficiary, a beneficiary's spouse, or the guardian you appoint. An executor who takes no benefit may attest. Nothing in the form compares the names you typed into the gift boxes with the names you typed into the witness boxes — that check is done by eye, by you, before anybody signs, and clause 10.2 of the Will recites that you have done it. Choose witnesses younger than you, record full addresses and identity numbers, and warn them that a surviving attesting witness will usually have to be examined in court to prove the Will. If you cannot sign your name, section 63(a) also lets you execute by a thumb impression or other mark, or by another person signing for you in your presence and by your direction. In Punjab and Chandigarh a thumb impression is common and perfectly good — but only if the attestation says how the Will was executed and which thumb was used. The execution block carries a note telling the witnesses exactly what to write; read it with them before anyone puts pen to paper. If you plan to register, pick your witnesses with the counter in mind and save yourself a second signing. Registration in both jurisdictions is administered under the Punjab Registration Manual, and the Chandigarh checklist states the point plainly: two witnesses for all deeds, and the first witness must qualify under paragraph 127 of that Manual — in practice a Lambardar, Sarpanch or Member Panchayat for a rural area, or a councillor, gazetted officer or advocate, with both witnesses known to each other and the first known to the Sub-Registrar. Strictly, the persons who identify you before the registering officer need not be the same two who attest under section 63, but in practice the same two do both. Choosing one attesting witness who also fits paragraph 127 means you do not have to assemble a second set of people on registration day. Your photograph must be affixed to the deed presented for registration, and in Chandigarh a Will is presented in duplicate.