Par panel scrutinises bill to check benami deals, black money

A Parliamentary panel today scrutinised the benami transactions prohibition bill which has been brought in by the government to unearth domestic unaccounted wealth.
The Parliamentary Standing on Finance, headed by M Veerappa Moily, wanted to know from the Finance Ministry officials as to how the multiplicity of agencies would help in curbing the black money menace, sources said.
It was suggested during the meeting that the Income Tax Act could be strengthened to deal with benami transactions in the country, they added.
Top officials of the Department of Revenue made presentations about the bill to the members of the Committee.

The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) (Amendment) Bill, 2015 was introduced by the Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha in Lok Sabha on May 13.
It provides for confiscation of property and jail for benami transactions.

Although the original legislation on benami transactions was enacted in 1988, it remained non-operational as the rules could not be formulated due to inherent infirmities in it.
Following this, in 2011 the government had introduced in Parliament a Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Bill, which proposed to replace the 1988 Act.
The Bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Finance for examination, which submitted its report in June 2012. However, the Bill lapsed with the dissolution of 15th Lok Sabha.

For decades, benami transactions by nature have been entered into by people who buy immovable and other properties in others' names to avoid tax and disclosure of ownership.
It has been one of the major sources of generation of domestic black money. There are no exact estimates of how much black money is involved in benami transactions.