Development of the Anti-Benami Laws in India

at mass level and to safeguard the overall Nation’s economy. These also stand to be the reasons due to which the Government is forced to form rigid laws and prohibit the practice of Benami dealings in order to prevent corruption, money laundering, etc.

To avoid any risk of political in nature.

To escape the obligations of paying taxes.

To play fraud on the creditors/banks, etc.

To adjust black money gained from some other corrupt practice.

The following are the few reasons which may play as a motivating factor to a person to deal in such transactions: In such cases, Benamidar just acts as a face mask or name lender who holds such property for the Beneficial Owner who might or not disclose his identity to the public but has the right to claim every benefit arising out of the property. To illustrate more, in this case (C) would be “Beneficial Owner” meaning enjoying all the benefits arising out of the purchase of the property (B) would be “Benamidar”, a person who would possess the title of the said property under his name. The word Benami according its Urdu origin means “no-name” or “without name” and as per Webster’s Dictionary the term Benami means “made, held, done or transacted under the name of (another person).” Therefore in layman terms, a Transaction can be termed as Benami when a seller (A) sells the property to the purchaser (B) but the sale consideration for the same is being paid by the (C). It was stated by the Income Tax Department in a public advertisement in January 2019 that while acting under the Anti-Benami Transactions law, it has confiscated assets worth Rs. A part of these major steps was the Amendment of the Prohibition of Benami Property Transaction Act, 1988 in the year 2016, which had proved to be very effective in recuperating the black money and penalizing the corrupts.

Over the past few years, India has witnessed various major steps to curb the black money businesses namely Income Declaration Scheme (2016), Demonetisation Drive (2016), etc.

Thakur bhim singh faag