Penalty for money hoarders: The government will be imposing a heavy penalty on the ones who are found holding old currency notes after December 31.
“There is a thinking within the government to provide for penalising those caught with high amounts of banned notes. If this is introduced, it will be in the form of an ordinance”, a government official said.
Penalty for money hoarders, government to introduce an ordinance
It is being said that the citizens will be allowed to hold only ten notes of the scrapped currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 each, if anyone is found to be holding more notes, the individual will be fined Rs 50000 or five times the amount hoarded by him (whichever is more).
“The draft ordinance also consists of the recommendations of the central board of directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Demonetised currency notes can only be deposited in the RBI after December 30. A grace period is likely to be announced later. Citizens can deposit or exchange old notes at the offices of the RBI till March 31, 2017.”
However, no official announcement has been made by the government as yet and it is expected that the ordinance will be released before Wednesday. The citizens have also been given another option of surrendering their hoarded money i.e. deposit it by December 30 with fifty percent as tax and penalty included, or else the I-T department will seize their money which will leave only ten percent with them.
On November 8, Modi had announced demonetisation of the high denomination notes, since then the economy is cash-starved. With lesser legitimate cash in hand, the citizens had to reduce their consumption level greatly. The current situation is supposed to persist for another month.
