THE ENLARGEMENT OF ITS SCOPE 217
In the matter of control over the preparation and execution of Provincial Budgets the Government of India urged that the scrutiny was not motivated by a desire to control an unwelcome policy, [1] but was inevitable because of the three important ties by which the Provincial Budgets were bound up with the Budget of the Government of India. These were (1) the incorporation of the income and expenditure of the Provincial Governments into the Budget and the Annual Accounts of the Government of India as an integral part thereof; (2) the system of divided heads of revenue and expenditure, and (3) a common treasury involving a combined “ways and means” for the transaction of the Central and Provincial Governments. The first two points of inter-relation required that the Government of India should examine the Budget Estimates of the Provincial Governments. It was urged [2 ] that the power to make such alterations was rendered specially necessary by the inveterate tendency of Local Governments to over-estimate their expenditure and under-estimate their revenue. Estimates which departed widely from actuals meant bad finance and also a provision of larger ways and means for the working of the Treasury. But even if this tendency was absent it was incumbent on the Government of India to scrutinize the Provincial Estimates in order to preserve accuracy in the combined accounts. Besides the interests of accuracy, the Government of India had to ascertain by a scrutiny of their estimates that a Province did not impair the stability of its finances by (1) including in its budget expenditure on schemes which had not received due administrative sanction, or was not likely to receive such sanction in time to be incurred during the year; or (2) by entering on an enhanced scale of expenditure a Province was not unduly depleting its balances. But by far the strongest reason why the Government of India needed to scrutinize the Provincial Estimates consisted in the fact that in so far as some of the Heads of Accounts were shared, the ultimate result of the Central Budget, whether there was to be a surplus or deficit, depended upon the accuracy of the estimates. The Government of India, it was urged, was thus directly interested in the Provincial Budgets, and could not have abandoned its right to scrutinize them without exposing its budgetary system to serious
1 R.C.D., Mit. of Evid., Vol, X, Q. 44981.
2 R.C.D., Mit. of Evid., Vol. X, Q. 44863.