SRINAGAR : Apni Party senior vice president Ghulam Hassan Mir on Friday expressed serious concern over the ill planned and badly executed e-stamping process that has snatched the livelihood of over 28000 families across Jammu and Kashmir.
In a statement issued here, Mir observed that thousands of families in J&K have been hit hard by the introduction of e-stamping initiative as the local stamp vendors whose income solely depended on the sale of stamps have been rendered jobless.
“While the e-stamping process is a need of the hour because of the technological advancement which provides a secure and tamper proof mechanism that can prevent scams and leakages and stop revenue losses, the government should have safeguarded the livelihood interests of the local stamp vendors before switching over to the electronic stamping project,” Mir remarked.
He said the policy planners should have involved the local stamp vendors in the e-stamping as most of them are in this field since decades and cannot adopt or do any other businesses. “Many educated unemployed youth were earning a living to run their families by stamp vending and had invested their time and money in this business. Now e-stamping has left them high and dry and they are not even able to pay the school fee of their children,” he added.
Mir said that many stamp vendors who were exclusively performing job of stamp vending and could hardly extract their livelihood out of it have now crossed the age bar to apply for any government jobs. “The J&K government should have thought out about these hapless families before appointing an outside company to act as stamp duty collection authority for the implementation of e-stamping procedure,” he added.
The Apni Party senior vice president said that the involvement of banks in this field will definitely deprive the families of stamp vendors of their earnings so the government must revisit its stamp duty policy and ensure the affected local stamp vendors are included in the new process.
“The local stamp vendors have been selling stamps to the public strictly in accordance with terms and conditions of their licenses. They have been earning revenue for the Government even when the life in the Valley had come to a standstill during the period of turmoil. The Government is now throwing them on roads which is totally illegal and unjustifiable,” he added.
Mir urged the Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha to intervene into the matter and ask the concerned department to revisit this policy by ensuring the livelihood interests of the local stamp vendors are protected. “The local stamp vendors are already trained in e-stamping procedure so better would be to hire their services and involve them fully in the process and ensure their percentage of earning is not affected by the new procedure,” he opined.
