DRAFT CONSTITUTION 677
on credit and things of that sort. If no provision was made for the presentation of supplementary grants and the other grants to which I have referred, the whole business of the executive would be held up. Therefore, while enacting the general provision that the president shall be bound to present the estimates of expenditure for the particular year before Parliament, he is also authorised by law to submit other estimates if the necessity for those estimates arises. Unless therefore we make an express provision in the Constitution for the presentation of supplementary and excess grants, articles 92, 93(2) and 94 would debar any such presentation. The House will now understand why it is necessary to make that provision for the presentation of these supplementary demands.
The question has been raised as to excess grants. The difficulty, I think, is natural. Members have said that when it is stated that no moneys can be spent by the executive beyond the limits fixed by the Appropriation Act, how is it that a case in excess grants can arise ? That, I think, is the point. The reply to that is this. We are making provisions in the terms of an amendment moved by my Friend Pandit Kunzru, which is new article 248-B on page
27 of List I, where there is a provision for the establishment of a Contingency Fund out of the Consolidated Fund of India. Personally myself, I do not think that such a provision is necessary because this question had arisen in Australia, in litigation between the state of New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia and the question there was whether the Commonwealth was entitled to establish a Contingency Fund when the law stated that all the revenues should be collected together into a Consolidated Fund, and the answer given by the Australia-Commonwealth High Court was that the establishment of a Consolidated Fund would not prevent the legislature of the Parliament from establishing out of the Consolidated Fund any other fund, although that particular fund may not be spent during that year because it is merely an appropriation although in a different from. However to leave no doubt on this point that it would be open to Parliament notwithstanding the provision of a Consolidated Fund to create a Contingency Fund. I am going to accept the amendment of my Friend, Pandit Kunzru for the incorporation of a new article 248-B. It is, therefore, possible that appart from the Fund that is issued on the basis of an Appropriation Act to the executive, the executive would still be in possession of the Consolidated Fund and such other fund as may be created by law from