India, Aug. 27 -- A linguistic ambiguity in a Haryana government notification had left some families in a peculiar legal limbo: while property could be transferred to a son's children without stamp duty, the same benefit was not always extended to a daughter's children. The Haryana government has now closed that loophole.

The state has clarified that its 100% stamp duty exemption on lifetime transfers of immovable property within a family also covers grandchildren through daughters, referred to as dohata-dohati or nati-natin, placing them on an equal footing with a son's children.

The clarification follows confusion over the wording of the Hindi version of a 2014 notification. While the English text broadly referred to 'grandchildren', ...