FAST-DS 2026 Under Tax Law - No recourse or support for person declaring via this scheme?

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Mohan (Querist)
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11 September 2026 Hello Experts -

This is a question from a lay person regading the recently (CG-DL-E-15082026-275490) introduced FAST-DS 2026 scheme.
Here it mentions that any money (fee/penalty etc for disclosure) is non refundable, cant be set off etc.
Question:
For person declaring a bank a/c under this scheme, the requiement is 'Sum of all deposits'. A person who had this a/c a decade ago was informed by the foreign bank that the retention policy meant that the statements are only available after 2018.
The rules just ask for supporting documentation but theres no room for variation when reporting 'sum of all deposit' for bank account, an alternative was not provided in the rules. (though it was provided during a similar scheme in 2015) ie, Question 5. https://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/documents/d/guest/circular15_2015-pdf

Main part -
SInce there's no refund, no mention of a provision to answer queries that the dept might have about a declaration made by a person., the person has no alternative but to declare pay the amount and then hope it is approved (since there;s no mentioned of 'Best estimate' alternate for 'sum of all deposits' like the scheme in 2015)?
From the way it is framed (atleast to a lay person) it looks like there's no support or appeal mechanism, so after paying the dialog is closed and if it is rejected for whatever reason, the person filing wont know the reason and most importantly the money will be lost.
Can an expert or someone who is reasonably familiar with law-speak please reply if this is as rigid and recourseless as it appears to be.

Thanks in advance for your expertise

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