I am coming to that point. In fact, it is an extremely pedantic way of looking at a simple fact. The sanction of the expenditure, the entering into a commitment and the payment of money in discharge of the commitment are all one and the same action. You cannot ask the Government to enter into a commitment and say, well, the Parliament will not pay, after the Government had entered into a commitment. It means a Government which cannot persuade a Parliament to honour a commitment that they had made by paying the moneys due under that commitment will have to go out of office as it has thereby ceased to command the confidence of Parliament. I am rather surprised that a Minister of Government who will be a daily faced perhaps when he rises to a position of greater responsibility than the one that he now occupies and would find himself in a peculiar position when he makes a commitment for an expenditure which the Parliament may or may not permit him to fulfil, should say that he should not be permitted to incur the expenditure until Parliament approves of the Scheme and thereafter allows him to put out the money for the purpose. It really means that a commitment made by a member of Government is absolutely worthless and if the Parliament really refuses to pay, it means, he ceases to have the confidence of the Parliament. But apart from that, the idea really in this new scheme is not to make a radical alteration from the existing scheme that Dr.Ambedkar already made mention of and I repeated it the day before yesterday. We do not want to put the Government into a straitjacket; we have assured the House more than once that the idea is not to make a serious departure from what obtains now and thereby embarrass the Government, but at the same time make enough provision so that if the Parliament of the future wants to exercise greater control, they can do so. There is one aspect in regard to the new articles, both 95 and 96 that are to be moved by Dr.Ambedkar hereafter, which is covered by clause (3), and that is a certain amount of initiative is to be left to the executive in this matter. That initiative might however, be curtailed by frequent meetings of Parliament, by the executive realising their responsibility and placing demand for large amounts of expenditure, if they have the reason to incur it, before the Parliament in the form of a supplementary budget. Sir, the Members of this House spoke of supplementary demands covering a large amount of over Rs. 100 crores having been passed by this House acting in the other Chamber during the last Budget session. I quite agree that it is something which is not correct. In proportion to our total Governmental expenditure, Rs. 100 crores is something very big. The only way in which the House could have made the Government come before them before the bulk of the expenditure was incurred was by compelling Government to present a supplementary budget–if things had happened in a way that it had exceeded the best anticipations of Government in regard to expenditure. Even here, the procedure outlined in article 96, namely a Vote of Credit might partially serve as a means of obtaining approval of Parliament in the future. If the Government feels that they have to incur expenditure of a character which they did not anticipate, a new war or an increased expenditure in a war they are carrying on, they might always go to the House and ask for a Vote of Credit. That is the procedure that has been made possible by the new set of amendments that are to be moved and that is the only type of control that the Parliament can exercise. The provision envisaged by clause (3), namely article 95 and 96, is put in any scheme of Financial provisions if the intention is that the Government is to carry on the Government of the day and the control that the Parliament might ultimately exercise is only by an understanding with the executive that the executive limits its expenditure up to a particular amount and for increased expenditure the convention has to be established that the Government will go before Parliament with a supplementary budget. If clause (3) is taken away, then article 95 becomes inoperative and I would at once point out be my honourable Friend Mr. Santhanam that it would make it impossible for the Government to be carried on without the Parliament sitting practically every day, so that Government can go to Parliament as and when occasion arises and say; “We have made this excess expenditure; this is unforeseen expenditure, please grant it, or else we will go out of office.” The Honourable Mr. Santhanam’s objection might be due to his dislike of the corollary to this scheme, namely, that Parliament will have to sit for a longer duration, probably three or four or six months, which he does not like. I am afraid, Sir, that though it is not my intention to disprove the validity of anything that Mr. Santhanam has said, I think it is my duty being particepscriminis in making the suggestions that have been put before the House in regard to the changes in the financial structure that this House………
