India has been mulling how it should regulate crypto for awhile. Now, it appears that an inter-ministerial committee’s (IMC) report on whether India should approve or ban crypto has reached finalization.

The IMC is headed by India’s Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs, Subhash Chandra Garg, tasked with developing the country’s crypto regulatory framework. Garg was previously reported as saying that the IMC report would be ready in July last year, but it has since been delayed.  

As The Crypto Sight noted before in earlier news, India’s official attitude toward crypto so far seems more mixed or even unwelcoming, hence whether India will ban or regulate crypto is a topic that is being keenly watched there.

Coin Crunch, a local crypto news outlet, even filed a Right to Information application with the Department of Economic Affairs to demand the status of the IMC report. It did this after claiming other Indian media were making “bogus” news that the report had already been submitted to the Finance Minister.

Coin Crunch claims it eventually received a one-liner government response to its queries after more than five weeks, which said: “The report of the Committee is under finalization stage, hence, prohibited under section 8(3) of RTI Act, 2005.”

Section 8(3) is understood to be a clause relating to non-disclosure on a subject matter, allowing an entity “to withhold data in certain circumstances” – such as when a report is being finalized, said Coin Crunch.

Previously, India’s Minister of State for Finance Pon. Radhakrishnan had spoken in Parliament’s lower house, the Lok Sabha, in December, saying there was no fixed timeline for crypto regulations to come about while the IMC works with “due caution”.