676 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
*The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Mr. President, Sir, I find that the financial provisions which are placed before this House have given considerable worry to the Members. I can appreciate that, for I remember that when Mr. Churchill’s father became the Lord Chancellor, a budget was placed before him showing figures in decimals and dots thereon. Evidently he was not a student of mathematics and could not understand what the figures meant with a dot in it. So he wrote on the file, “what do these damned dots mean ?”, asking for an explanation from the Secretary of the Finance Department. Having regard to such difficulty of understanding from persons so highly placed as Mr. Churchill’s father, I am not at all surprised if the members of this House also find similar difficulty in understanding these provisions. I should therefore like to go somewhat into elementary propositions in order to place the House in a right frame of mind.
Sir, I should like to tell the House the effect of the provisions contained in article 92, article 93(2) and article 94. Article 92 places upon the President the obligation to lay before Parliament a financial statement for the year—I would like to emphasise the words “for the year”—showing the expenditure in certain categories, those charged on the revenues of India and those not charged on the revenues of India. After that is done, then comes into operation article 93(2), which states how the estimates are to be dealt with. It says that the estimates shall be presented to the House in the form of demands and shall be voted upon by the House of the People. After that work is done, article 94 comes into operation, the new article 94 which says that all these grants made by the House of the People shall be put and regularised in the form of an Appropriation Act No. I would like to ask the Members to consider what the effect is of articles 92, 93 (2) and
- Suppose we did not enact any other article, what would be the effect ? The effect of the provisions contained in articles 92,
93(2) and 94 in my judgment would be that the President would not be in a position constitutionally to present before Parliament any other estimates during the course of the year. Those are the only estimates which the President could present according to law. That would mean that there would be no provision for, submitting supplementary grants, supplementary demands, excess grants on the other grants which have been referred to such as votes
*CAD; Vol. VIII, 10th June 1949. pp. 768-70.