I think, Sir, that such an emergency power is not necessary. Such an usurpation will not be allowed in any democracy, not to speak of India. I listened most attentively to the speech of my honourable Friend Mr. Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer and I felt that his was a legal argument and there was no substance in it to justify the granting of such power to the President or the Cabinet. Everybody knows that the Government of India are now angling to collect all the sales tax on behalf of the provinces and to distribute them. If article 277 will be in the brain of the Finance Minister and his Ministry, they will try to collect all resources, so that provinces will have little which they will collect, and in time of emergency the Centre will apply article 277 and thereby take away whatever provincial resources are collected by the Centre. Who says that the Cabinet of the time in time of emergency will be more democratic than it is today? The sympathy which the Finance Minister and the Finance Ministry have shown over the discussions on the Federal Finances on the floor of this sovereign House shows that provinces will get scant justice, not to speak of scant courtesy, in times of emergency. Suppose we have a Finance Minister who gets fluttered over every little incident, who becomes extra-ambitious. During the Second World War, the Government of India through their Executive Councillors became extra-ambitious and took away by means of Ordinances all our resources–lock, stock and barrel. Who can similarly doubt the power of the Central Government to pass Ordinances as ambitiously or as ignorantly as the British Government did? They imposed “control” prices and supplied all they required for themselves and the Allies and the result is that India is in the grip of inflation and prices are now 365 per cent. of the pre-war level, whereas in America they are somewhere about 200 per cent. and in England somewhere about 100 per cent. That is the effect of the “control” prices and controlled purchases.
