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THE Adjudicating Authority for the anti-benami law has upheld a 2023 land assets attachment order issued by the Income Tax department despite the taxman not being able to identify the “beneficial owner,” stating that the said law has specific provisions to deal with such instances. The Authority, a quasi-judicial body, issued the order on November 26 last year in a benami assets case that came to the fore after the department raided three Lucknow-based realty groups that had “purchased big land parcels in the Kakori (Lucknow district) area by paying huge amount of unaccounted cash.”

 

The Lucknow-based Benami Prohibition Unit (BPU) of the department issued a provisional order in October 2023 attaching five land parcels in Kakori valued at over Rs 3.47 crore and categorising them as “benami assets.” The order was sent to the Authority for confirmation with the name of a ‘benamidar’ (in whose name a benami property is standing) apart from two companies and two individuals who were named as “interested parties” in the case. The provisional order did not mention the name of any beneficial owner. Usually, when an attachment of assets order is issued by the I-T department under the Prohibition of Benami Property Transaction (PBPT) Act, 1988, it bears the name of the ‘benamidar’ and the ‘beneficial owner.’ ‘Benami’ means ‘no name’ or ‘without name.’ The real beneficiary of such a property is not the one in whose name it has been purchased.