Sir, I only want an increase in the amount. In fact, the amendment which Dr. Ambedkar has moved makes it legal for local boards, district boards and municipalities to levy taxes on the income of the inhabitants in their areas. In fact I would have very much wished that this clause (2) had been deleted. This was an amendment which no less a person than the Premier of my Province, the Honourable Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant had also given notice of. What his amendment intended and what I also want to impress upon the House is that our local bodies are practically starved of finances. We have provided for finances for the Central Government, we are trying to allocate taxes between the Provinces and the Centre, but the municipalities, the local boards and all these local bodies have practically no finances. I come from the District of Gorakhpur which has recently been divided into two parts but still it has a population of about 22 lakhs. The annual income of the District Board there is only Rs. 11 lakhs which means about eight annas per individual of the population. Do you expect that any district board with such an income can do anything for the welfare of that mass of population? I can quite understand the Centre being strong and having finances, the Provinces being strong and having finances, but ultimately all nation building tasks will have to be done by local authorities. You may say you can lay out railways and roads, you can also provide Universities, but ultimately it is the municipalities and local boards which have to look to the sanitation of the areas, to the primary education in their areas and to roads. Do you imagine that with a sum of Rs. 11 lakhs the District Board of Gorakhpur can meet the needs of that big District? What has been my experience in my district must also be the experience of all of you in your districts. I therefore think that if you this source of income of taxation only up to a limit of Rs. 250, then you really close one important avenue to the District Board. In my district there are 23 sugar mills, and they pay huge dividends-in fact Rs. 30-crores was the annual profit of the sugar factories in United Provinces and Bihar that year. Cannot the District Board legitimately ask them to pay a few thousand rupees? But by this you make it impossible for the District Board to levy any tax on the sugar mills although the sugar mills use their roads and the Board have to spend money on those roads. Yet we cannot tax these factories beyond Rs. 250. I have only demanded one per cent. of their income or Rs. 1,000. I have taken care to put both the things because it is quite possible that in the case of individuals it would not be possible to find out their income. We would not have all the powers of the income-tax authorities to go and find out the incomes of individuals. In the case of factories and corporations like sugar mills, they publish their balance sheets and we can know their income and tax them to the extent of one per cent. In other cases, you can limit the amount to Rs. 1,000. This will increase the revenues of the local bodies substantially. In fact at present because we cannot tax the rich properly we are forced to tax the poor people heavily. Even the man with a betel shop is taxed Rs. 5 or 10, which he cannot afford to pay. If we can tax the sugar mills and other factories as also other mill owners to the extent of at least 1 per cent of their annual income, I am sure these poor people will be spared that tax, which is now very heavy on them. I therefore think that this limit of Rs. 250 is a proposition which should not be laid down in the Constitution. If necessary, it can be left to the Parliament, to which we have left many other things. Here you want to fix in the. Constitution that no local board shall levy a tax over Rs. 250 on income. I would therefore request the Drafting Committee to alter it as I have suggested or omit it altogether, so that the local boards may be free to tax on incomes according to the needs of their areas. While we are spending crores of rupees under the central budget, local boards are starved for very small sums. They are the bodies who really want the money so that they can give proper attention to the people in their areas, give them better roads and schools and other amenities which they very much need. All our schemes are ultimately calculated to provide amenities to the villagers but if we deny the revenue to the district and local boards who are responsible for satisfying the needs of these areas, the people of those areas will suffer. I think that the sources of revenue of the district boards, municipalities and local boards must not be limited in this manner in the Constitution. This is a very retrograde provision in the Constitution and must be amended.
