Mumbai, March 19 : The Maharashtra government has tabled the bill to amend the Maharashtra Stamps Act, 1958. This was necessitated after the Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Ajit Pawar in his budget for 2025-26 proposed to mobilise additional revenue by revising stamp duty charged on certain documents.

The bill was presented late Tuesday evening by the Minister of State Yogesh Kadam in the state Assembly.

'Section 4 of the Stamp Act is proposed to be amended with a view to increase the rate of stamp duty, which is fixed long ago at the nominal amount of Rs 100 to Rs 500 in case of supplementary document if more than one document is used to complete the transaction,' reads the bill.

'Sections 10 and 10D of the Stamp Act are proposed to be amended with a view to facilitating online mode for payment (e-payment) and 'certificate of stamp duty' in State Government Treasury a new provision for 'e-stamp certificate', so that people can pay stamp duty online at any time from anywhere,' reads the bill.

Further, the bill says, 'Subsection (1) of section 31 of the Stamp Act is proposed to be amended with a view to increasing the adjudication fee from Rs 100 to Rs 1,000 for changeability of the instrument, applying to have the opinion of the Collector and to provide for depositing the certain amount of stamp duty specified therein while filing an application for adjudication of the executed instrument.'

Deputy CM Ajit Pawar has presented the Rs 7 lakh crore budget for 2025-26 projecting a revenue deficit of Rs 45,891 crore, fiscal deficit of Rs 1.36 lakh crore and debt stock of Rs 9.32 lakh crore.

He had projected the state's own tax revenue worth Rs 3.87 lakh crore for 2025-26 against the revised estimate of Ra 3.67 lakh crore in 2024-25.

Pawar had said in his budget speech that amid the constraints to propose new taxes or increase the prevailing taxes in the GST regime, he hoped to mobilise additional revenue of around Rs 1,200 crore by proposing revised stamp duty and Motor Vehicle Tax.

/IANS