678 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
time to time. It would be perfectly possible for the executive without actually having any intention to break the Appropriation Act to incur expenditure in excess of what is voted by Parliament and draw upon the Contingency Fund or the other fund. Therefore a breach of the Act has been committed and it is possible to commit such an act because the executive in an emergency thinks it ought to be done and there is provision of fund for them to do so. The question, therefore, is this : when an act like this is done, are you not going to make a provision for the regularisation of that act ? In fact, if I may say so, the passing of an excess grant is nothing else but an Indemnity Act passed by Parliament to exonerate certain officers of government who have in good faith done something which is contrary to the law for the time being. There is nothing else in the idea of an excess grant and I would like to read to the Members of the House paragraph 230 from the House of Commons—Manual of Procedure for the public business. This is what paragraph 230 says :—
“An excess grant is needed when a department has by means of advances from the Civil Contingencies Fund or the Treasury Chest Fund or cut of funds derived from extra receipts or otherwise spent the money on any service during any financial year in excess of the amount granted for that service and for that year.”
Therefore, there is nothing very strange about it. The only tiling is that when there is a supplementary estimate the sanction is obtained without excess expenditure being incurred. In the case of excess grant the excess expenditure has already been incurred and the executive comes before Parliament for sanctioning what has already been spent. Therefore, I think there is no difficulty; not only there is no difficulty but there is a necessity, unless you go to the length of providing that when any executive officer spends any money beyond what is sanctioned by the Appropriation Act, he shall be deemed to be a criminal and prosecuted, you shall have to adopt this procedure of excess grant.
The Honourable Shri K. Santhanam : May I ask if under the provisions of the law as stated in the new article 95(2) the three preceding articles will have effect ? Does it mean that every supplementary demand should be followed by a supplementary Appropriation Act.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Yes; that would be the intention.
The Honourable Shri K. Santhanam : The appropriation will not be for the whole year ?
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : There may be supplementary appropriation. That always happens in the House of Commons.
Prof. Shibban Lal Saksena : What about my amendment. Sir ?