z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-02.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 11
ON BUDGET 11
particular law that this House may have passed. Sir, I say that this is an encroachment upon the authority of this House. I say that there are rules and rules. There are rules which merely carry out what is called the administrative policy. There are rules which are nothing else but a part of the law, and I claim and I insist that wherever a rule is a part of the law, then this House has not only the right to pass upon the original legislation but it has the right to pass upon the rule as well, and I do not understand how any executive Government can appropriate this field to itself. But the Congress Government has. Time in and time out it encroached upon this privilege of the House. This lifting of money, this asking for a blank cheque is, I regard, another in-road and an encroachment upon the privileges of this House. Sir, I do not know what the situation now is but I was quite familiar with what is known as the Devolution Rules which were prepared under the old Government of India Act and I think my honourable friend the Finance Minister will bear me out that one section of the Devolution Rules included what is called the constitution of the Finance Department. It was one of the cardinal principles then recognised under the old Government of India Act that the Finance Department ought not to be a transferred department. The reason given was a very substantial reason for not treating the Finance Department as a transferred department. The Finance Department was intended to be the watchdog. The Finance Department was intended to scrutinise all expenditure that was put forth by any particular Minister in charge of any particular portfolio. It was intended that one of the principal functions of the Finance Department was not only to see whether the sum asked for any particular purpose was necessary and could be granted, having regard to the financial position of the province, but whether the grant asked was properly itemised.
I am sure that, although the old Government of India Act of 1919 has ceased and the Devolution Rules framed under that Act are probably no longer law, the principles enunciated in those Devolution Rules must be permanent, must be abiding for all time. Ever since finance came to be recognised as an important part of the machinery of control which the Legislature has forged over the Executive, it has always been accepted that no Minister shall place before the Legislature a demand for any lump sum without specifying the particular services, the particular items which are supposed to be included in that demand. The reason is two-fold. The House must know what are the details on which funds are being spent. Secondly, it is necessary for the Audit and Accounts Department to know how the money granted by the House has been spent. And I say, Sir, that it is something which is quite inexcusable, that this Government should have had the courage—I say, the audacity to come forward before this Legislature and merely say that they want Rs. 31 lakhs for spending on certain items, about the propriety of which the House has never decided and as to the details of which the Government itself has not made up its mind. I say it is audacity.