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India’s crypto bill won’t likely be taken up during Parliament’s Budget Session

The government reportedly “wants to hold wider consultations on the matter” and it is highly unlikely that the bill will be drafted before March as the Finance Ministry and institutional stakeholders have other priorities.

New Delhi, India / Image by: Wikimedia Commons

Mon, 27 Dec 2021, 06:29 am UTC

India’s crypto industry still continues to face regulatory uncertainly as the much-awaited cryptocurrency bill was not taken up during the Parliament’s Winter Session. A former government official even expressed doubts about the government’s ability to figure out the complexities of crypto.

The bill titled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021” was listed on the website of the lower house of India’s Parliament, Lok Sabha. However, it was never taken up for discussion during the winter session, which ended on December 22, 2021.

However, it appears that the crypto bill won’t be up for discussion during Parliament’s next session either, according to Coindesk. The government reportedly “wants to hold wider consultations on the matter” and it is highly unlikely that the bill will be drafted before March as the Finance Ministry and institutional stakeholders have other priorities.

This is not the first time that the crypto bill was listed on the Parliament’s agenda but eventually failed to be taken up during the discussions. The first time was during the budget session in February 2021.

There’s a lot of confusion and apprehension surrounding the proposed bill. A brief description of the proposed legislation stated that “the Bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.” It is not clear what those certain exceptions might be and whether or not Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s biggest crypto in terms of market cap, might be included in those exceptions.

Meanwhile, a former government official expressed doubts on the government’s ability to figure out crypto. “I expressed serious doubts when the government had expressed its intent to present the bill, about the introduction of the crypto-assets/currencies bill in the Winter Session of Parliament. I am, therefore, not surprised to see the present situation where there is zero clarity over what is the Bill,” former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said. He headed the inter inter-ministerial committee that drafted the original crypto bill that proposed banning cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.

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