Rent Receipt (Kiraya Rasid)

Stamp duty

A rent receipt carries stamp duty of Re. 1, and the figure is the same in Ludhiana as it is in Sector 17. Duty is charged under Article 53 of Schedule I to the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 on a receipt for an amount or value exceeding ₹5,000 — the threshold having been raised from ₹500 to ₹5,000 with effect from 10 September 2004. Below ₹5,000 no stamp is chargeable. Why neither jurisdiction can change that number. Duty on receipts is one of the few heads Parliament alone rates, under Entry 91 of List I of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, so it sits in Schedule I to the Act and not in a State schedule. Article 35, which prices the tenancy agreement itself, sits in Schedule I-A and does differ between Punjab and Chandigarh; Article 53 does not. Consistently with that, the Department of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management's published "Document wise detail of Stamp Duty, Registration Fee and Facilitation charges" at revenue.punjab.gov.in carries no row for a receipt, and neither does the Revenue Department, Chandigarh Administration's "Stamp Duty & Registration Fees" at revenue.chd.gov.in/SRORegistrationFee.pdf. Both tables were read on 6 September 2026, and neither carries a date or a notification number of its own, so re-open them before relying on anything else in them. Punjab: Re. 1. Chandigarh: Re. 1. No facilitation charge, no cess and no pasting fee arise on either side, because those are charged on instruments presented for registration and this one is not presented anywhere. In practice the stamp is only used on cash. Buy the Re. 1 adhesive revenue stamp at a post office, or from a licensed stamp vendor at the tehsil complex of your district in Punjab or at the 30 Bays Building, Sector 17, Chandigarh. Affix it on the signature block and have the Landlord sign across it, so the signature runs partly on the stamp and partly on the paper — that is the cancellation section 12 of the Act requires, and section 12(3) treats an instrument bearing an uncancelled adhesive stamp as unstamped. Where the rent moved through a bank, UPI or a cheque, the payment record is itself the proof and a stamp is not usually asked for. Your right to a stamped receipt, and what a missing stamp costs. Section 30 entitles the person paying, on demand at the time of payment, to a duly stamped receipt; section 65 punishes a refusal or neglect to give one with a fine of up to ₹100. An unstamped receipt is not void: under proviso (b) to section 35 it is admitted in evidence against the person who gave it on payment of a penalty of Re. 1. So the missing stamp is a nuisance and not a disaster — but affix it anyway, because payroll desks refuse receipts without one and will not argue the point. Where tax has been deducted at source, stamp the sum the Landlord actually received. Article 53 charges duty on the amount acknowledged by the receipt. This receipt acknowledges the net figure, and it is the net figure that decides whether the ₹5,000 threshold is crossed. A gross rent of ₹60,000 net of ₹1,200 deducted still acknowledges ₹58,800, so the Re. 1 stamp is needed on a cash payment either way. Do not confuse this with the duty on the tenancy document, which is real money. An eleven-month letting in Punjab is charged under Article 35 of Schedule I-A at 4% of the annual rent, with a ₹500 facilitation charge and a ₹200 pasting fee; the same letting in Chandigarh falls in the "up to five years" row and is charged 2% on the annual average rent and 3% on the refundable security deposit — never on advance rent. Issuing receipts does nothing to cure an under-stamped agreement, which remains liable to be impounded under section 33 and inadmissible under section 35 until the deficit and penalty are paid.

Registration

Not registrable, and there is nowhere to take it. Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908 lists the instruments whose registration is compulsory and a receipt for rent is not among them, whatever the amount and whatever the period it covers. Do not present it to the Sub-Registrar or Joint Sub-Registrar of the tehsil in which the premises fall in Punjab, and do not present it to the Sub-Registrar, UT Chandigarh, under the Deputy Commissioner, at the 30 Bays Building, Sector 17. No fee is payable on it at either counter, and no counter will take it. The tenancy behind the receipt is an entirely different question, and in Punjab it is the sharpest departure from the ordinary law in the country. For premises in Punjab to which the Punjab Rent Act, 1995 applies — broadly, a letting on or after 30 November 2013 of a building that section 3 does not exempt, and any letting at all of NRI-owned premises — section 4(1) requires the letting to be by an agreement in writing notwithstanding section 107 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, and section 4(2), as substituted by the Punjab Rent (Amendment) Act, 2013, requires that agreement to be in the Form specified in Schedule I to the Act and to be registered under and in accordance with the Registration Act, 1908 by the authority specified thereunder — the Sub-Registrar — on payment of a registration fee of ₹1,000, and says so notwithstanding anything in the Registration Act. The familiar eleven-month workaround is abolished for those premises. Note also that an appeal to the Appellate Authority under section 50 expressly does not lie in a matter concerning registration under section 4(2). One caution on the fee: section 4(2) fixes ₹1,000, while the Revenue Department's own document-wise table charges 1% of the annual rent on a pattanama or lease, and it is not settled which the counter applies to a Schedule I agreement. Ask at the Sub-Registrar's counter before you pay; NGDRS online registration runs in every Sub-Registrar office across the 22 districts of Punjab through revenue.punjab.gov.in. For premises in Chandigarh, and for Punjab premises outside the 1995 Act, the ordinary rule governs. A lease from year to year, for a term exceeding one year, or reserving a yearly rent is compulsorily registrable under section 17(1)(d) of the Registration Act, 1908, and section 49 makes an unregistered one inadmissible as evidence of the transaction — you cannot use it to prove the term, the rent or the right to stay. The East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 prescribes no form of tenancy agreement and imposes no registration duty of its own. That Act is saved for Punjab premises let before 30 November 2013 by section 76(2) of the Punjab Rent Act, 1995 — the provision numbered section 75 in the Gazette text and cited as section 75 in Neeraj Malhotra v. Jaswant Singh, the numbering having moved on substitution by Punjab Act 33 of 2013 — but the saving reaches premises other than NRI-owned premises, so an NRI landlord's old tenancy in Punjab is on the Schedule I and ₹1,000 registration track, not the ordinary one. Appointments and e-registration payment for Chandigarh are taken online at revenue.chd.gov.in. A dated statement on the Chandigarh position, because it has been moving. As at 6 September 2026 the 1949 Act continues to operate in the Union Territory: on 29 May 2026 a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court kept in abeyance a Ministry of Home Affairs notification of 6 May 2026 that had purported, under section 87 of the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, to extend a different tenancy statute to Chandigarh, and directed that the 1949 Act would continue, holding prima facie that section 87 confers no power to repeal an existing law. Nothing on that file after 30 May 2026 has been read here. Whatever the outcome, it does not make a rent receipt registrable. Registering the receipt would not fix anything the tenancy is missing. Months of receipts do not cure an unregistered Schedule I agreement in Punjab, and they do not cure an unregistered lease of more than a year in Chandigarh.

Notarisation

Not required, and not worth paying for. No statute in force in Punjab or in the Union Territory of Chandigarh requires a rent receipt to be notarised. Section 13(2) of the Punjab Rent Act, 1995 asks for a receipt "signed by the landlord or his authorised agent" and asks for nothing else — not attestation, not notarisation, not witnesses. The East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 as it runs in Chandigarh asks for no receipt at all, so it can hardly demand a notarised one. No payroll desk and no assessing officer asks for a notarised rent receipt. Notaries appointed under the Notaries Act, 1952 practise at the district courts complexes across Punjab — Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala, Bathinda, Mohali and the rest — and in Chandigarh around the District Courts at Sector 43 and near the 30 Bays Building at Sector 17. The notarial fee is fixed by the Notaries Rules, 1956 and is small; the service charge on top is not fixed. On a rent receipt you would be buying nothing, and you would need to do it twelve times a year. What to do instead, because the underlying worry is real. The worry behind "should I get it notarised" is that the receipt might be doubted later. Answer it the cheap way: pay through a bank, by UPI or by cheque, so that the payment exists independently of the Landlord's signature; take the receipt at the counter of payment where the rent is cash; number the receipts in sequence; date each one on the day it is actually signed and never earlier than the day the money came in; and keep them with the tenancy agreement rather than loose. If the Landlord refuses to sign at all, the remedy in Punjab under the 1995 Act is the section 13(3) application to the Rent Authority within two months, not a notary; in Chandigarh, remit by postal money order or bank transfer and keep the record. The one document in this chain that is genuinely worth notarising is the tenancy agreement itself, where it is not being registered — banks, employers, schools and utility offices in Punjab and Chandigarh routinely ask for a notarised copy of an unregistered rent agreement even though no law requires one.

Witnesses

None, and none should be added. Only the Landlord signs. The Tenant does not sign, and there is no attestation block, because a receipt is a unilateral acknowledgement by the person who received the money — adding a witness line invites someone to leave it blank, and a document with an empty signature block looks worse than one that never had it. Section 13(2) of the Punjab Rent Act, 1995 requires the receipt to be "signed by the landlord or his authorised agent" and requires nothing further. The East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, which governs in Chandigarh and for Punjab premises let before 30 November 2013 where the landlord is not a non-resident Indian, requires nothing at all. Who may sign in the Landlord's place. An agent, caretaker, property manager or family member who actually collects the rent should sign in his or her own name and add "for and on behalf of" with the owner's name, and the Tenant should hold a copy of the written authority — a letter from the owner is enough, and where the collector acts under a power of attorney for property matters that instrument should itself be registered and produced. Sections 13(2) and 13(3) of the 1995 Act attach both the duty and the liability to "the landlord or his authorised agent", so authority is the thing that makes the signature worth having. Where the owner is a non-resident Indian the authority is the whole of it: the person at the counter is almost never the owner, and a receipt signed by a relative with nothing in writing behind him proves a payment to that relative. Joint owners. Where the premises stand in more than one name, the co-owner entitled to receive the rent should sign, or every co-owner should, showing their shares. In Chandigarh check the names on the Estate Officer's allotment file before deciding who signs, because for sector property that file is the title. The revenue stamp takes the place of the witness line. On a cash receipt for more than ₹5,000, affix the Re. 1 adhesive revenue stamp under the signature and have the Landlord sign across it so that the signature runs partly on the stamp and partly on the paper. That crossing is the cancellation required by section 12 of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, and an adhesive stamp that has not been cancelled is treated as no stamp at all under section 12(3). Sign in ink, on the day, and never on a date earlier than the money. The Landlord should sign each receipt on or after the day the rent was received and should not sign a book of blank receipts in advance. A receipt dated before the payment it acknowledges is the single artefact that most reliably destroys a House Rent Allowance claim, because it can only have been written up afterwards; a sheaf of pre-signed receipts is worth less than a bank statement. The form asks for the payment date and the receipt date separately so that the two can be compared, and nothing in the form stops you entering them the wrong way round — that check is yours.