The article says a bill has been introduced in the legislature. That there might be a disagreement between members of the legislature and the ministry of finance seems entirely plausible to me.
There is a video online from the Finance Minister's talk with Rahul Kanwal in India Today Conclave 2021.
Her words were that they are preparing a note to thee Cabinet on it. The cabinet will then take a call and then propose it to the legislature as a bill.
It is still in early stages, but if Nirmala Sitharaman's words are any indication, they seem to be contemplating allowing crypto currencies to circulate in a regulated manner. Balajis mentioned that crypto could be treated as a foreign exchange currency. You can hold, for example, USD as an Indian resident, but it is not legal tender for exchange and is taxed (not sure about this) if you use it for the purpose of trading.
Germany also treats crypto as private money, not as an asset/investment to be paid capital gains on. I think this is a nice, legal alternative for crypto.
Untaxed, illegal transactions for large sums are a big problem in India (especially in Real Estate/property markets), so the govt. is trying to walk a fine line in regulating without killing the crypto market.
One interesting advantage of crypto to India would be that it will allow India to bypass USD and SWIFT , and whatever scheme China cooks up in the future. This will really dent the ability of the USA to abuse the Dollar's status as the reserve currency to stop printing tonnes of money and raking up public debt in the long term without facing inflationary consequences.
>>Untaxed, illegal transactions for large sums are a big problem in India (especially in Real Estate/property markets)
PAN cards are mandatory for registrations in Karnataka State for more than 15 years now. And everything is already digitised. The government knows who is buying what.
Real estate gets a lot of bad rep for no reason. This was the biggest revelation in the immediate after math of demonetisation, people were expecting the real estate market to crash totally, it just didn't happen. The assumption was it was all done on black cash and demonetisation would bring down the whole pyramid. The market barely moved. People realised the hard way contrary to what they believed most transactions were genuine.
Recently due to the COVID remote work phenomenon the Real Estate market was expected to crash. That didn't happen either. People capable of buying properties never left Bangalore(Access to Schools, Career opportunities, hospitals etc reasons). The people who went back, are now returning.
That's a misreading of my comment. I was just pointing out the fact that the minister of finance expressed opposition to this does not make the story "fake news"
I think I did a poor job of stating my understanding of your comment.
I was pointing out that the proposal of a bill does not mean it will get passed nor that the majority of the legislature supports it. This is similar to how you were pointing out that the finance minister disagreeing with the bill doesn't mean the Indian government is fully against it.
The ruling party has all the necessary votes in the legislature to do whatever they want. There isn't much friction within the party about small potatoes issues like this.