Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's ambitious anti-black money drive has lost its way through the bureaucracy. Stringent Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, which came in force a week before Modi announced demonetisation in November 2016 may prove to be ineffectual if the government does not move quickly.The Income Tax Department has set up 24 benami properties units in its investigation wings across the country to streamline functioning under the new Act. Till last year-end, the department had attached assets worth more than Rs 2,000 crore for which it issued over 530 notices and made 550 attachments.Benami properties are those in which the real beneficiary is not the one in whose name the property has been purchased.More than 780 benami asset attachments worth crores of rupees run the risk of being invalidated in the near future as the government has failed to create a designated adjudicating authority for over a year-and-a-half since the law came in force, according to PTI.The Act empowers provisional attachment and subsequent confiscation of benami properties. It also allows for prosecution of the beneficial owner, the benamidar, the abettor and the inducer to benami transactions, which may result in rigorous imprisonment up to seven years and fine up to 25% of fair market value of the property. The benami property could be movable or immovable property, tangible or intangible property, or corporeal or incorporeal property.Section 7 of this law, that attracts a rigorous imprisonment of up to seven years and fine up to 25 per cent of the fair market value of the property, requires the government to create an independent 3-member Adjudicating Authority (like the one for PMLA) that will decide on the validity of the attachment of properties made under this legislation by the Income Tax Department.In the absence of such an authority for over 1.5 years now, the government has entrusted the task of handling these cases on an ad-hoc basis and as a "transitional" arrangement to the already short-staffed and over-burdened Adjudicating Authority for the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), a stringent law enforced by the Enforcement Directorate.Worried that these high-value sensitive cases may get "time-barred" or invalidated as benami attachment orders have to be confirmed within an year of issue by the ITD, the Authority has recently asked the Department of Revenue and the CBDT under the Finance Ministry to not send to it the cases and "hold" them with the IT Department, till the new body is constituted.The Authority, as per official records, has put the government on notice stating if a new body is not created and existing vacancies of members and staff are not immediately posted to the existing setup, "it will be impossible for it to dispose of benami cases in the prescribed time limit...considering the speed at which work is pouring under the benami law.""If benami cases fail to be adjudicated within the prescribed time, it will lead to major litigation and embarrassment for the government as the drive against benami assets has been the most-talked about action of the government under its flagship anti-black money drive, about which PM Modi has himself spoken at various forums and poll rallies," a senior Finance Ministry official told PTI.The PTI report claims that the existing authority is forced to work without a regular Chairman since April 1 as the incumbent retired a day before and has only two working members now. It has asked the Finance Ministry to provide it at least nine junior staff members like court masters and peons.