Kiosk or Counter Space Licence Agreement

Stamp duty

This Agreement grants the Licensee a personal, revocable licence to use the Licensed Space, not a lease, easement or other interest in the Mall or Building — clause 2 says so, and clause 3's relocation right, together with the Licensor's retained right of access and control, are what keep that recital true in substance and not merely on paper. Neither the Punjab Department of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management's own "Document wise detail of Stamp Duty, Registration Fee and Facilitation charges" table (revenue.punjab.gov.in, checked 18 September 2026) nor the Chandigarh Sub-Registrar's own stamp duty and registration fee table (revenue.chd.gov.in, checked 18 September 2026) lists a plain Agreement by name — both list only the major named instruments (Sale/Gift, Pattanama/Lease, Power of Attorney, Will, Partnership Deed, Family Settlement, and so on) — so this Agreement is chargeable under Article 5 of Schedule 1-A to the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 as applicable in Punjab, and under the equivalent Article 5 of the Chandigarh Administration's own stamp schedule in Chandigarh, and the figure that applies is not in either ready reckoner: confirm it before the stamp is bought, at the Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited e-stamp counter in Punjab, or at the Sub-Registrar's counter, 30 Bays Building, Sector 17, or the office of the Collector, Union Territory of Chandigarh. Real risk: if this Agreement is in substance found to grant exclusive possession — the Licensee alone controls access to the Licensed Space, the Licensor cannot enter or relocate it, its staff and stock are kept apart from the building's own management — a court or a Collector can, applying the substance-over-form test the Supreme Court of India set out in Associated Hotels of India Ltd. v. R.N. Kapoor (1959), treat it as a lease and charge the ad valorem duty that instrument carries instead of the flat Agreement duty, whatever this Agreement calls itself. Clauses 2 and 3 exist to keep this Agreement on the licence side of that line; do not amend them out for convenience without appreciating what recharacterisation would cost. Stamp each counterpart; e-stamp through the Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited in Punjab, or buy stamp paper from a licensed vendor or the State Bank of India Treasury Branch, Sector 17 in Chandigarh for the higher values.

Registration

Not compulsorily registrable as drafted. Section 17(1)(d) of the Registration Act, 1908 and Section 107 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 catch a lease from year to year, for a term exceeding a year, or reserving a yearly rent; Section 17(1)(b) of the Registration Act, 1908 catches an instrument creating, declaring, assigning, limiting or extinguishing an interest in immovable property worth more than Rs 100. This Agreement grants no lease and no interest in immovable property of any kind (clause 2), so neither paragraph reaches it by itself, whatever the Licence Period runs to. The real risk is the same one the stamping note describes: an Agreement that is in substance a lease is compulsorily registrable as one, and Section 49 of that Act keeps an unregistered instrument that needed registration out of evidence of its own terms. As drafted, and so long as clauses 2 and 3 are not amended away, this Agreement stays outside Section 17 on the licence side of the line. If the Parties choose to register this Agreement out of caution, or a lender or an incoming operator's counsel asks for that, present it in Punjab to the Sub-Registrar of the tehsil in which the Mall or Building lies, via igrpunjab.gov.in, and in Chandigarh to the Sub-Registrar, 30 Bays Building, Sector 17, via revenue.chd.gov.in, under Section 18 of the Registration Act, 1908, within four months of signature under Section 23 (a further four months on a fine of up to ten times the registration fee, under Section 25). Doing so does not by itself turn this Agreement into a lease.

Notarisation

Not required to give this Agreement effect, and does not cure a registration defect. Use a notary for the papers around it instead — a board resolution or authority letter for whoever signs, the mall management or facility operator's written authority to grant licences where it is not itself the owner, or a power of attorney used to sign this Agreement, which under Section 33 of the Registration Act, 1908 needs authentication (by the registering officer, a magistrate, or, if executed abroad, a notary followed by consular attestation) before this Agreement is signed, not after.

Witnesses

No statute requires this Agreement to be witnessed, because it is not ordinarily presented for registration. Two witnesses — adults, not the Parties or their signatories — remain good practice given what this Agreement records, and the signature block provides for them. If the Parties do register this Agreement, the same rule a lease is registered under then applies: in Chandigarh, under paragraph 127 of the Punjab Registration Manual, the first witness must be known to the Sub-Registrar — in the sectors, in practice a councillor, a gazetted officer or an advocate — and the two witnesses known to each other; in Punjab, two identifying witnesses with photo ID are needed, captured in NGDRS.