Finance ministry junks objections to Benami bill

The finance ministry has overruled the objections of home ministry on its Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Bill, 2011 and has asked the Cabinet to consider the bill in its original format. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 14, 2011, 02:41:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The finance ministry has overruled the objections of home ministry on its Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Bill, 2011 and has asked the Cabinet to consider the bill in its original format.

The Cabinet had earlier deferred a decision on the bill after the home ministry objected to certain exemption clauses related to property registered in name of a person’s wife or an unmarried daughter.

The bill to replace the existing law of 1988 has been introduced with an intention to fight corruption, especially menace of black money, which allows government authorities to confiscate benami properties.

The bill has been fast tracked to demonstrate the UPA government’s seriousness to fight corruption.

The home ministry had objected to two specific clauses of exemptions including where there is no agreement between the ghost buyer and the person in whose name the property is registered.

In a supplementary note for the Cabinet, the finance ministry has given a detailed explanation overruling home ministry’s objection saying it should not be a crime to register a property in name of a wife or an unmarried daughter.

The finance ministry also said that enough safety provisions have been provided in the proposed law. If proven that a benami property has been registered in name of close family member, without his or her approval, action will be taken as per law of the land.

The note also says that no new exemptions will be allowed till it is approved by both houses of Parliament.

The finance ministry has also said the new bill was being brought at the 1988 law proved to be ineffective because of limited powers given to government officials.

In the 1988 law, the burden of proving a particular transaction as benami was entirely with the government or the person who makes the allegation. The proposed law provides for setting up of fast-track courts for such cases. And, appeal against the decision of the court will lie with respective high courts.

The Cabinet will, however, take a final call on the nature of the bill on Thursday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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