Maharashtra: Stamps dept mops up Rs 3,300 crore

Hike helped by surge in registration of documents in Mumbai

The stamps and registration department of the Maharashtra government has posted a revenue mop up of Rs 3,300 crore for the financial year 2003-04. This is Rs 200 crore more than the incremental target set by the state for the fiscal.

Confirming this, a senior government official told Business Standard: "The sharp increase in the number of documents registered in Mumbai city and the rationalisation of stamp duty rates (incremental) have largely been responsible for the increased revenue collections. Our computerised system has been clogged by the high number of documents presented for registration".

The department has opened up an additional office in the northern suburb of Andheri to meet the increased rush by property owners to have their documents registered. One more office will soon come up in the Borivali as well.

For the cash strapped Maharashtra government, the increased revenue mop up by the stamps and registration department should bring some relief since the revenue mop up by most other departments for the first nine months of 2003-04 showed a shortfall of nearly Rs 1,000 crore.

In the first nine months of 2003-04, almost all the revenue heads for the state government have fell short of target.

Like the increase in the stamps and registration collection, the motor spirit tax collection was up Rs 3,048 crore, Rs 74 crore above the targeted collection of Rs 2, 974 crore.

Similarly the entry tax collections soared above the target of Rs 6.31 crore to reach Rs 10.88 crore and luxury tax collection (targeted at Rs 86.51 crore) stood at Rs 118.39 crore.

However, barring these four revenue heads, the revenue collections fell far short of the targets. Sugar purchase tax, expected to fetch Rs 111 crore, managed to bring in a mere Rs 2.76 crore. Professional tax collections of Rs 708 crore fell short of the expected Rs 814 crore target.

And the actual electricity tax collections was just Rs 474 crore, much less than the targeted Rs 960 crore. Interestingly, even state excise collections of Rs 1,611 crore in the first three quarters fell short of the targeted Rs 1,687 crore. However, excise commissioner B Matankar said that the state will meet the revenue collection targets for the year 2003-04.

"We expect (once data is compiled up to March 31, 2004) to meet the revenue target of Rs 2,300 crore, set for the fiscal. Already in the months of January to March, my field officials have reported a 400 per cent increase in the revenue collections (of the excise department) from the issue of liquor permits since it has been made mandatory from April 1."