GUJRAT: The e-stamping in six districts of the Gujranwala division will start from July 26 as facilitation centres to help litigants in issuing electronic stamp papers have been established in registration branches as well as the land record centres in these districts.

The e-stamping has already been launched in the Gujranwala city as a pilot project and now it is being introduced across the region while meeting for the purpose was held at the Punjab Board of Revenue in Lahore on Friday.

Senior officials of the revenue department from six districts of the Gujranwala division -- Gujrat, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Mandi Bahauddin, Hafizabad and Narowal — attended the meeting.

An awareness seminar to introduce e-stamping is being held in Gujrat on July 19 which will be addressed by senior officials of the BoR, Punjab.

With the launching of e-stamping project, the manual yellow color printed stamp papers as well as the authorized stamp paper vendors will become redundant as the people could deposit the required amount through credit card or with any branch of the Bank of Punjab to get a printed white paper with the deposited amount mentioned on the head of this paper.

Additional District Collector Irfan Ali Kathia said the decades-old practice of first getting stamp papers issued from the accounts office would be replaced by the e-stamping.

He said the litigant could operate it through online payment as the entire amount deposited would be printed automatically on a single white paper which would be the e-stamp paper and could be used for all kind of agreements, sale of property, purchase deeds and court purposes etc.

He said the district government, for the assistance of the general public, had established five facilitation centers across the district -- two each in Gujrat and Kharian at the computerized land record centers and registration branches of the revenue department and one at Sara-i-Alamgir.

He said each facilitation center would have a computer operator to help in getting the e-stamp paper issued through payment and the services at facilitation centers would be free-of-cost.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2016