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DECEMBER 12, 2025 Aarti Palkar WP.8365.2024.doc The Petitioners' application for allowance invoked Section 47(b) of the Stamp Act. The term "spoiled" would need to be understood as having been rendered useless because the document was not executed. Section 48 analysed:

26. Having examined the scope of Section 47 of the Stamp Act, it would be pertinent to examine Section 48 of the Stamp Act, which reads thus:

Reasons for Intervention:

30. It is in this backdrop and in the light of precedents obtaining from the approach approved of by the Supreme Court and earlier decisions of other benches of this Court that, in my opinion, a case for exercise of the extraordinary writ jurisdiction has been made out. The substantive right to allowance for Stamp Duty is in Section 47 of the Stamp Act while the procedural deadline for the application for allowance to be made is stipulated in Section 48 of the Stamp Act. Even a plain reading of the two provisions would show that Section 48 is not the provision dealing with the substantive right to a refund. It is a procedural provision that is in aid of the substantive right to a refund stipulated in Section 47 of the Stamp Act, read in the context of the charging provisions on Stamp Duty including Section 3, Section 5, Section 10 and Section 17 of the Stamp Act dealt with above.

31. A wider reading of the scheme of the Stamp Act would also indicate that the law is not that once a stamp has been purchased, making an allowance for it is impossible, save and except for compliance with deadlines under Section 48 of the Stamp Act. For example, Section 49 enables making an allowance for stamped papers DECEMBER 12, 2025 Aarti Palkar WP.8365.2024.doc used in printed forms for instruments by banks and bodies corporate if such forms are no longer required by such person. While this provision stipulates no time limit at all, Section 50 provides for allowances to be made in relation to any instrument inadvertently stamped with a greater value than necessary or wrongly stamped despite not being charged with duty to be allowed for, but with a six-month deadline for an application to be made.

48. The net result of the multiple iterations and declaration of the law can be said to be that the writ court would have the power to exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to deal with the adjectival provisions of the deadline for an application in Section 48 of the Stamp Act, even while the Stamp Authorities would need to adhere to the stipulated deadlines. Looking to the nature of the facts and circumstances of the case, the deadlines in Section 48 of the Stamp Act would not be directory in nature for purposes of exercise of discretion by the Stamp Authorities, but would be so in the exercise of the extraordinary writ jurisdiction.