672 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
ARTICLE 94
- The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Sir, I move:
“Thai for article 94, the following article be substituted :—
‘94. (1) As soon as may be after the grunts under the
last preceding article have been made by the House of Appropriation the People there shall be introduced a Bill to provide for Bills the appropriation out of the Consolidated Fund of India
all moneys required to meet—
(a) the grants so made by the House of the People: and
(b) the expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India but not exceeding in any case the amount shown in the statement previously laid before Parliament.
(2) No amendment shall be proposed to any such Bill in either House of Parliament which will have the effect of varying the amount or altering the destination of any grant so made or of varying the amount of any expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India, and the decision of the person presiding as to the amendments which are admissible under this clause shall be final.
(3) Subject to the provisions of the next two succeeding articles no money shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated fund of India except under appropriation made by law passed in accordance with the provisions of this article.’”
As I explained yesterday the object of this new article 94 is to replace the provisions contained in the old article relating to the certification of a schedule by the Governor-General.
†The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Mr. President, Sir, I thought that the observations made by my Friend Mr. T. T. Krishnamachari would have been regarded as sufficient to meet the objections raised by my Friend Mr. Santhanam, but since my Friend Mr. Bharathi by his speech has indicated that at any rate his doubts have not been cleared, I find it necessary to rise and to make a few observations. My Friend Mr. Santhanam said that we were unnecessarily borrowing the procedure of an Appropriation Bill and that the existing procedure of an authenticated schedule should have been sufficient for our purposes. His argument if I understood him correctly was this : that an Appropriation Bill is necessary in the House of Commons because the supply estimates are dealt with by a Committee of the whole House and not by the House itself. Consequently the Appropriation Bill is, in his opinion, a necessary concomitant of a procedure of estimates being dealt with by sort of Committee of the House. Personally, I think there is no connection between the Committee procedure of the House of Commons and the necessity of an Appropriation Bill. I might tell the
*CAD, Vol. VIII, 10th June 1949, pp. 754-55.
† Ibid., pp. 762-64.