DRAFT CONSTITUTION 667
matter of making provision for the various heads of expenditure placed before it by Parliament. The new provision is that the procedure regarding certification by the President should be replaced by a proper Appropriation Act, passed by the legislature.
The argument in favour of substituting the procedure for an Appropriation Bill for the provisions contained in article 94 of the Draft Constitution is this. The legislature votes the supplies. It is, therefore, proper that the legislature should pass what it has done in the form of an Act. Why should the work done by the legislature in the matter of voting supplies be left to the President to be certified by an executive act, so to say ? That is the principal point that we have to consider. In the matter of Finance, Parliament is supreme, because, no expenditure can be incurred unless it has been sanctioned by Parliament under the provisions of article 93. If Parliament has sanctioned any particular expenditure on any particular head, then the proper authority to certify what it has done with regard to expenditure on any particular head is the Parliament and not the President. Therefore, the procedure of an Appropriation Act is substituted for the procedure contained in article 94 of this Draft Constitution.
I may also mention that article 94 was appropriate under the Government of India Act of 1935 for the simple reason that the Governor-General had a right to certify what expenditure was necessary for him for discharging his functions which were in his discretion and in his individual judgment. The expenditure which the Governor-General wanted to incur in respect of functions which were in his discretion and in his judgment were outside the purview and outside the power of Parliament. He was entitled to change the amount, to alter that, to add to them. It was consequently necessary that the Governor-General should be the ultimate authority for certification because he had independent power of making such budget provision as he wanted to make in order to discharge his special functions. Under our new Constitution the President has no functions at all either in his discretion or in his individual judgment. He has therefore no part to play in the assignment of sums for expenditure for certain services. That being so, the certification procedure is entirely out of place under the new Constitution. I might also say that the appropriation procedure is a procedure which is employed in all Parliamentary Governments in