250 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
This is the natural corollary of the statutory hypothecation of all-India revenues to all-India needs. The law would not inhibit a provincial legislature from exploiting for provincial purposes any new source of taxation which it had the ingenuity to discover. But even in that case the project would, before being translated into action, have to secure the assent of the Finance Department of the Government of India, which would not give its sanction without considering closely if it trespassed on the Central Government’s sources of taxation. Again, the provision of the law which required that
“ no governor or governor in council (of a province) shall have the power of creating any new office or granting any salary, gratuity or allowance without the previous sanction of the Governor General of India in Council”
had given the Government of India a right of control over expenditure in the Provinces which was exercised through the instrumentality of a series of codes of instructions, such as the Civil Service Regulations, the Civil Account Code, the Public Works Code and the like. These codes partly dealt with the mechanism of finance such as the maintenance of a uniform system of audit and accounts, the custody of public money, remittances, economy, and such matters ; but they also imposed definite restraints upon the powers of Provincial Governments, to create new appointments or raise emoluments and other matter such as recruitment, promotions, leave, foreign service and pensions upon which the codes really constitute a digest of the case-law laid down from time to time by the Government of India which the Provincial Governments must strictly obey. If their powers of taxation and expenditure were strictly controlled the power of borrowing was never conceded to the provinces. It will be recalled that Port Trusts and Municipalities might raise loans within defined limits, but because the revenues of India were legally one and indivisible and were liable for all debts incurred for the purposes of the Government of India, Provincial Governments possessed no separate resources on the security of which they could borrow.
Even within the prescribed limits of Provincial Finance the Provincial Governments were not free from the control of the Central Government. Because the provincial settlements were based not on provincial revenues but on provincial needs,