Mr. President, Sir, I beg to support the amendment moved by my honourable Friend, the honourable Rev. Nichols-Roy. That amendment, if accepted, will make this article a little more flexible. At the present moment, until Parliament by law provides, no amount can be given as grants-in-aid to any of the provinces. If the amendment suggested by him is accepted, if the Parliament does not by law provide, the President may prescribe by Order and then the provinces may be given such sums as they may be in need of. You will find,. Sir, from the scheme of the provisions of this Chapter that except for income-tax. all the other collections made by the Centre are to the retained by them until ‘under article 260 the Finance Commission makes a report and then the President can take action; but so long as that is not done, it is necessary that the President should be enabled to make some provisions for the provinces which are in need of such an aid. The other provision in this section is quite necessary and useful and in spite of the difficulties imagined by my Friend, Mr. Brajeshwar Prasad, I do not see how, even if any other provision is made for the tribal areas as suggested by him, the provision in this article can stand in the way. The two provisos make provision that if any amounts is spent by any of the Provinces for schemes of development that will be undertaken both in consultation or with the approval of the Government of India, such sums will be paid by the Government of India and similarly Assam will be paid out of the revenues of India as grants-in-aid such sums, capital and recurring, which they will be spending in excess of what they had spent in the last two years. Therefore, Sir, I do not see how these provisions here can in any way stand against or militate against any of the provisions that we may make hereafter. Therefore, I would appeal to the Drafting Committee to accept the amendment moved by the honourableRev. Nichols-Roy as that will not in any way interfere with the scheme and at the same time will make this provision more flexible.
