826 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Pandit Hirday Nath Kunzru : The honourable Member is utterly unjustified.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : That is the honourable Member’s opinion. My reading is that something new is being put forward now.
Pandit Hirday Nath Kunzru : The honourable Member is misrepresenting me and knows that he is doing so.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : The Honourable Member is misrepresenting his own thoughts. Therefore, as I understand it, there is no question of my honourable Friend suggesting any alteration in the system of modifying the proceeds of the excise duty and the grant. The only question that he raised is the question of the modification of the allocation of income-tax during an emergency. Even so what do I find ? If I again read his amendment correctly, he is: not altogether taking away the discretion which is left to the President in the matter of the modification of the allocation of the income-tax. All that he is doing is that if the President was to make a modification of the allocation of the income-tax as contained in the previous order, then the President should proceed in a certain manner which he has stated in his amendment. In other words, the only difference between the draft clause as put by me and the amendment of my honourable Friend Pandit Kunzru is this that, so far as the discretion of the President is concerned, it should not be left unregulated, that it should be regulated in the manner winch he suggests.
My reply to that is this : Where is the reason to believe that in modifying or exercising the power of the President to modify the provisions relating to the distribution of the income-tax he will act so arbitrarily as to take away altogether the proceeds of the incometax ? Where is the ground for believing that the President will not even adopt the suggestion made by my honourable Friend. Pandit Kunzru, in the amendment as he has put it ? There is no reason to suppose or to make such an arbitrary suggestion that the President is going to wipe out altogether the total proceeds which the provinces are entitled to receive under the allocation. After all the President will be a reasonable man ; he will know that to a very considerable extent the proceeds of the income-tax do form part of the revenues of the provinces ; and he will also know that, notwithstanding the fact that there is an emergency, it is as much necessary to help the Centre as it is necessary to keep the provinces going.