According to the Stamp Duty Act the agreements entered into by the Board with its consumers are to be affixed with stamp duty of Rs. 3/- per agreement. The departments of Government are normally exempted from affixing the stamp fee on their agreements. However, as the Board is not exempted from such stamp duty on agreements entered into with Government departmetns, such stamps are required to be affixed on the copy to be retained by the Board for which the Board has been insisting from the Governement departments for payment of Rs. 3/- towards stamp duty.

    In this connection, the legal advice is that if the following clause is incorporated in the agreements, the agreements entered into with Government departmenrs would be valid even if no stamp duty is affixed on the copy to be retained by the Board. It is, therefore proposed to incorporate the following clause in all the agreements to be entered into by the Board with all its consumers.

Relevant Clause:

    "The stamp duty on the agreement shall be borne by the consumer'

       All the field officers are, therefore, advised to incorporate this clause in all the agreements hereafter. This should be added just before the last clause relating to "marginal notes", and the relevant clauses should be renumbered.

The above is in partial modification of the Departmental Circular No.39, reference No.PG 50/43410 dated 29-8-1963..........................................................................................................