FLAGS ON INDIAN PRINCELY STATE FISCALS

Colonel Jayanta Dutta, MD, FISCD, FIPHA, FCCP of Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and an well-known philatelist of India has kindly agreed to contribute articles on fiscals related to Flags.
Here goes the first installment;

Do you know India had nearly 550 princely states and nearly 250 of this states had their own Court Fee and Revenue stamps. Many of these states were too small in area and population, so such stamps were issued in very small quantity.  And even major part from the issued stamps were either destroyed by government relative agency (ies) or found in damaged condition. So, available quantity is supposed to be a minor part of the stamps issued. If you are collecting post-independence, thematically or foreign stamps or say foreign currency notes or post independence notes or coins, this would be an endless collection because everyday new issues comes out and you have to keep on updating your collection regularly.

On the other hand, if you are collecting Indian native states fiscals, there is nothing new is going to be issued, thereby one can try and make a complete collection, and mind you these stamps were not for public use. All these states had issued few stamps and we are still lucky that we can get these stamps, though, as usual, most of the stock has gone to the UK and USA as there is a foundation which has invested huge money and collected Indian princely states' fiscals and have also published a standard catalogue specially on fiscals of Indian princely states (Koeppel & Manners)

 

 For lovers of flags Indian Princely States fiscal offers many verities and I thought to begin with the whole exercise alphabetically with Akalkot state.

Akalkot was located in Bombay Residency. Akalkot had an area of 498 square miles, with about 90,000 inhabitants.

  Akalkot issued Court Fees, Receipts and 

Stamped papers. 

 

The first series of Court Fees bears the inscription Akalkot state. The flag exists in several sizes (not mentioned in K&M). Note that this Court Fee is unused and this is rare

 The second Court Fee series used changed spelling of state, now being Akalkat state. Note the doubling of red color (the flag and denomination).

 The third series included the flag in design and was not printed in second operation as opposed to the first two designs

The fourth and fifth series are smaller in size and bear inscription Akalkot state or Akalkat state respectively. The fourth series is known with perfin SPECIMEN 
 

 The Fifth Series

The sixth Series is for Receipts

To be continued