Did 劵 and 券 become variants in PRC/simplified in 1995? The topic of 劵 vs 券 came up a couple of months ago and I did some Internet research at the time.

I turned up a document about an orthographic reform in China in 1995 which included, among many other tweaks, that these two are now considered variants of the same character in simplified Chinese.

More specifically, both characters were already in use with different meanings but 券 was to acquire the meanings of 劵 since 劵 was going to be simplified by merging into 券, thus leaving 劵 as obsolete in simplified writing though they obviously must remain separate in traditional writing and also in simplified writing up to 1995.

But now the topic has arisen again and I can't seem to find the discussions that lead me to the official document last time.

So I would like to ask the experts here how much of this I have right, if I have anything wrong, and can we find the official document detailing this change?
No. It became a variant way earlier than that. There may well have been a document to that effect in 1995, but it would not have been anything new.

It is well established that 劵 and 券 were two different seal scripts characters, as @HenryHO points out. However, according to Qing Dynasty linguist Tuan Yu-tsai's annotated version of Shuo-wen Chieh-Tzu:


  【清·段玉裁·說文解字注】鄭云：『劵今倦字也。』據此則 漢時已倦行劵廢 矣。今皆作倦，蓋由與契券從刀相似而避之也。


So 劵 was the initial clerical script adoption of the original seal script character. According to Tuan, the visual similarity to 券 caused the character to be rewritten as 倦 as early as by the Han Dynasty.

It seems then the original 劵 character was then subsumed into the character 券 as a variant clerical script form, either intentionally or by mistake due to their visual similarity. This is supported by the Song Dynasty dictionary Collected Rimes, edited by Ding Du:


  【宋·集韻·去聲·願韻】契也。劵別書之 書以刀判契其旁，故曰契劵。 


Which explicitly named them as variants in an official government dictionary, almost 980 years ago.

Therefore, 劵 has been a variant of 券 for over a thousand years.



Addendum:

A possible earlier reference might be in the Southern Liang Dynasty dictionary Jade Chapters (玉篇) (Note: NOT the Song Dynasty 大廣益會玉篇) by the scholar Ku Yeh-wang.


  【梁·顧野王·玉篇】契書。


This has been cited by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education as the first attested use of 劵 as a variant for 券. If true, the use of them as variants would have been as early as a couple of centuries after the Han Dynasty.