DRAFT CONSTITUTION 665
doing, I mention the matter now. There was no such provision in the existing Draft Constitution. The second thing which is proposed to be done is to introduce the idea of what is called a Consolidated Fund. That will be done by the new article 248-A which will come at a later stage. We also wish to provide for the establishment of a Contingency Fund which Parliament may want to establish. That will be done by the new article 248-B.
I do not think that any explanation is necessary for the first provision, namely, that there should be no tax except by law. It is a very salutary provision and the executive should not have any power of levy upon the people unless they obtain the sanction of Parliament. With regard to the Consolidated Fund, it is really in a sense not a new idea at all; it is merely a new wording. The existing wording is “Public Account of the Governor General of India.” If Honourable Members will refer to a volume called the Compilation of Treasury Rules, Volume I, they will find that the Public Account is also referred to as the Consolidated Fund. I shall read the definition. “Public Account of the Central Government means the Consolidated Fund into which moneys, received on account of the revenues of the Governor-General as defined in section 136 of the Act are paid and credited and from which all disbursements by or on behalf of Government are made.”
Therefore, the use of the word “Consolidated Fund” is merely a change in nomenclature because that word is already used as an equivalent of the Public Account of the Central Government.
There is also an important idea behind this notion of a Consolidated Fund. Tills notion of a Consolidated Fund, as Members might know, arose in England some time about 1777. The object why the Consolidated Fund was created in England was tills. Originally Parliament voted taxes to the King, leaving the King to collect and spend it on such purposes as he liked. Oftentimes, the King spent the money for purposes quite different from the purposes for which he had asked it. Parliament could have no control after having voted the taxes. At a later stage. Parliament followed another procedure, namely, to levy a tax and to appropriate the proceeds of that tax for a certain purpose, with the result that when they came to passing the budget, there was practically no money left, all the taxes having been appropriated to specific purposes. Nothing was left for the general purposes of the