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With these prefatory observations, we may now proceed to examine the constitutional validity of the Act. The Preamble of the Act which "affords useful light as to what the statute intends to reach" or in other words "affords a clue the scope of the statute" makes it clear that the Act is intended to canalise for productive purposes black money which has become a serious threat to the national economy. It is an undisputed fact that there is considerable amount of black money in circulation which is unaccounted or concealed and therefore outside the disclosed trading channels. It is largely the product of black market transactions and evasion of tax. Indeed, as pointed out by the Direct Taxes Enquiry Committee headed by Mr. Wanchoo, retired Chief Justice of India "tax evasion and black money are closely and inextricably interlinked." The abundance of black money has in fact given rise to a parallel economy operating simultaneously and competing with the official economy. This parallel economy has over the years grown in size and dimension and even on a conservative estimate, the amount of black money circulation runs into some thousand crores. The menace of black money has now reached such staggering proportions that it is causing havoc to the economy of the country and poses a serious challenge to the fulfilment of our objectives of distributive justice and setting up of an egalitarian society. There are several causes responsible for the generation of black money and they have been analysed in the Report of the Wanchoo Committee. Some of the principal causes may be summarised as follows: (1) high rates of taxation under the direct tax laws: they breed tax evasion and generate black money; (2) economy of shortages and consequent controls and licences leading to corruption for issuing licences and permits and turning blind eye to the violation of controls; (3) donations of black money encouraged by political parties to meet election expenses and for augmenting party funds and also for personal purposes; (4) Corrupt business practices such as payments of secret commission, bribes, money, pugree etc. which need keeping on hand money in black; (5) ineffective administration and enforcement of tax laws by the authorities and (6) deterioration in moral standards so that tax evasion is no longer regarded as immoral and unethical and does not carry any social stigma. These causes need to be eliminated if we want to eradicate the evil of black money. But whether any steps are taken or not for removing these causes with a view to preventing future generation of black money, the fact remains that today there is considerable amount of black money, unaccounted and concealed? in the hands of a few persons and it is causing incalculable damage to the economy of the country.