248 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
with regard to its own Legislature. The fact that since 1909 there was no majority of official members in the Provincial Legislature as there was in the Central Legislature was a matter of no moment so far as its practical consequences to the Executive were concerned ; for it is to be remembered that in practice the difference between nominated members from among the non-officials and the official members was only superficial. Both had their mandate from the government who gave them their seats in the Legislature, and as nominees of the Government they voted for the Government, so that, though not in theory, in practice the Provincial Government had as much a standing majority in Legislatures as the Central Government had in theory as well as in practice. Nor did the budget procedure of the Provincial Government mark any decided improvement over that adopted in the Central Government in the matter of giving greater control to the Legislature over the Executive. In both cases the aim was to give the members of the Legislature the privilege of discussing beforehand the question of such alteration with reference to the necessities of the Budget, only in the case of the Provincial Budget this privilege was allowed to be exercised at an earlier stage than in the case of the Imperial Budget. But in view of the fact that the Resolutions of the Legislature on the Provincial Budget, as those of the Central Ledgislature on the Imperial, were only recommendations to their respective Executives, this difference between the Budget procedure of the two Governments did not impose any greater control over the one Executive than it did on the other. Again, the provision that a committee of the Provincial Legislature had been allowed the privilege of framing the non-obligatory portion of the Provincial Budget did not give the Legislature any appreciable control over the Executive. First of all, the Provincial Government could always restrict the scope of this Budget Committee by transferring any head from the class of non-obligatory expenditure to the class of obligatory expenditure. Besides this, the operation of certain other rules of Budget procedure based upon general principles of public finance tended directly to restrict the powers of the committee to put forth schemes of alternative or additional expenditure. It was rightly provided that schemes involving recurring expenditure could only be proposed with due regard to the rate of growth of recurring revenues and recurring