From Black Money To Green Governance: Sustainable Enforcement Pathways Under Benami Law

The black money ecosystem poses one of the gravest challenges to India’s economic sustainability, fiscal transparency and institutional integrity. While the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act (PBPTA), 1988 and its 2016 Amendment provided a legal foundation for curbing hidden ownership, the enforcement process itself must evolve toward sustainable governance. This paper introduces the concept of “Green Governance” - a governance model that transforms punitive enforcement into a system promoting transparency, ethical capital flow and sustainable development. The Benami Enforcement Sustainability Index (BESI) is a conceptual framework developed by the authors for this study, designed to measure the sustainability of Benami Law enforcement by combining legal, fiscal, and governance indicators. Using the Benami Enforcement Sustainability Index (BESI), the study evaluates enforcement intensity, fiscal impact and governance outcomes between 2017–2025. A structured perception survey of 150 respondents (including CAs, advocates and citizens) and secondary data on benami confiscations are analyzed through correlation and regression to examine how enforcement contributes to sustainable governance. The results reveal that enhanced enforcement correlates positively with fiscal transparency, public trust and reduced illicit capital flow. The paper proposes four Sustainable Enforcement Pathways — Institutional, Technological, Community and Environmental — demonstrating how anti-benami reforms can act as a driver of economic ethics, institutional stability, and long-term fiscal resilience, in alignment with SDG-16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.