E Arun and Tarun Kartick
Port Blair, Jul 24: The residents of the Union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands are suffering because of Lack of stamp papers of lower denominations. According to the sources stamp papers of lower denominations such as of Rs.2, Rs. 5, Rs. 10. Rs. 20 are not readily available with the stamp vendors throughout the Islands and now people are forced to buy stamp papers of higher denominations just for executing small affidavits and preparing bonds which can legally be executed on smaller denomination stamp papers.
The residents of some of the far-flung areas of these Islands are rushing to the capital town of Port Blair in order to fetch some stamp papers of lower denomination for their tasks as no stamp paper is available in their area. But after reaching Port Blair they find that situation is same at Port Blair too.
In Ferrargunj the tender for vendor ship of Stamp paper has not yet been finalized for the current financial year even when one quarter of this financial year has already passed. According to the sources the last tender for the stamp vendorship in the Ferrargunj area expired when the last financial year passed and yet the tender for the vendor ship of the new financial year seems to be a distant dream since no tender is floated until today.
The helpless residents of the far flung areas are now forced to rush to Port Blair to obtain even a Two Rupee stamp paper by spending even more money than the actual cost of the stamp paper.
When Andaman Sheekha Contacted Mr. Rupesh Kumar Thakur, DC, South Andaman to know the possible reasons for the disruption in availability of Stamp Papers. Mr. Rupesh informed us that “the delay was caused because the vendors had not submitted their challans with the authorities and today we have received the challans and the bonds were distributed and from tomorrow it will be available.”
He also informed us that the bond papers of Rs. 2 and Rs. 5 will be no longer available since the printing cost reaches higher than the cost of the bonds however he added that they have sufficient stock of bond papers of denominations Rs. 10 and Rs. 20 and those bonds will be available with the vendors from tomorrow, (25 July 2013).
