Mr. President, I regret to say that both my Friends Mr. Kamath and Professor Saksena are labouring under certain misconceptions. The first thing about this article 261 is that it does not give any additional power to President. There is no clause in this which seeks to give any additional power to President than what has already been decided by this House and is embodied in articles 254 and 255. Prof. Saksena was not also correct when he said that the Finance Commission has wide powers. Its powers are defined in 260 clause (3) and as would he quite clear, the powers are merely to make recommendations to the President. They have no final power to take any action whatsoever unless they act under clause (4), but those powers can be only those that are delegated to them by Parliament. Since it is only recommendations that they are competent to make, I do not think it is correct to say that the Finance Commission has wide powers. Nor can this article be, aid to enlarge the powers of President in any way. Whatever damage was to be done to the authority of the Parliament as the supreme body has already been done by articles 254 and 255 and no amendment whatever to 261 can rectify that position. I would however like to point out that it would have been better had the words ‘by him’ would have been added after the words ‘thereon’ so as to make it clear that the Parliament will have placed before it the President’s action on the recommendations that have been made by the Commission and the recommendations themselves. Otherwise the article is quite satisfactory because when these papers are laid before Parliament, the Parliament would be competent to pass on it such resolutions or turn down any recommendations or to set aside any action taken so long as it has powers to do so. Those powers that have been expressly taken away from it by articles 254 and 255 cannot be exercised by Parliament even if we accept the amendments proposed by Prof. Saksena and Mr. Kamath. The Parliament will be incompetent to interfere with them. But the rest of the powers which it enjoys, as long, as they have not been specified as taken away from Parliament, it cannot be said to be not able to exercise. So I think the amendments suggested are not at all necessary, but the wording of the article as it stand is not as satisfactory as I would wish. It should have been made clear that excepting these cases governed by 254 the Parliament would be competent to take such action as it pleased on the recommendations of the Commission which are not specifically excluded from its purview. Otherwise I do not think there is likely to be any difficulty in retaining this clause as it stands.
