Goodbye long queues, Lahore to get e-stamp papers from next week

The City District Government of Lahore has announced that it would be launching e-stamp papers to revolutionize the already existing governmental procedures.

A training workshop was conducted in Lahore. The workshop aimed at educating real-estate agents, stamp vendors, and other stakeholders about the usage of e-stamp papers. In Lahore, the e-stamp papers will be made available at 65 branches of the Bank of Punjab (BoP). Similarly, the residents of Faisalabad and Rawalpindi will also able to get e-stamp papers from any BoP branch present in the vicinity of their respective districts.

People desirous of obtaining stamp papers will no longer have to wait, and stand in queues, in front of the government treasury office. Now, they will only need to generate the challan Form 32-A from the website after putting in the required information. The challan will be payable at designated BoP branches across the districts. After payment of stamp fee, the citizen will be issued e-stamp paper from BoP. The e-stamp paper then can be verified by the concerned parties using the website, or by using the SMS service.

The e-stamp papers were first introduced a couple of years back. The introduction of e-stamp paper is a great step towards revolutionizing old government procedures. The introduction of technology itself is the manifestation of need and hence will always bring ease and security to the existing methods. For example, the ability of e-stamp papers to be verified will help curb the fraud mafia responsible for forging fake bogus stamp papers which already had costed huge revenue losses to the state.

The step will also bring ease to the buying and selling of properties. Recently, SECP revamped its website on new technological standards. Government also plans to include the research of academia into the development projects. Various technology-oriented initiatives like e-voting are also in focus.

The e-stamp papers would be launched for property transactions, from August 23 in Lahore, reported The Express Tribune. Similarly, a report from Daily Times pointed that all district and tehsil courts of Rawalpindi division will be getting e-stamp papers from September 1. The system has already been launched in Faisalabad, reported Business Recorder.