[Tribunals- Day-2] If Your Lordships Finds Speaker's Certificate Invalid, Whole Finance Act With Amendments To All Statutes Will Go":AG

In his turn, Attorney General K. K. Venugopal on Thursday defended the passage of the Finance Act of 2017 as a Money Bill in circumvention of the Rajya Sabha. A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court was hearing the challenge to the introduction as a Money Bill of the Act, which altered the mode of selection, appointment, removal, and the qualifications and terms of service of the Presiding Officers and Members of as many as 19 tribunals, conferring extensive powers on the Central government in this behalf. "The provisions in the Aadhaar Act regarding the expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) are similar to this Act. It contains provisions regarding payment of salaries and compensation. Till Part XIV it is only a taxing statute. This Act would qualify as a Money Bill", the AG commenced his submissions. He indicated Article 110(1)(g) which states that a Bill shall be deemed to be a Money Bill if its content is even incidental to any of the other matters specified in the sub-clauses (a) to (f). He drew the bench's attention to sub-clause (c) by virtue of which any Bill dealing with the custody of the CFI or the Contingency Fund of India, and the payments into or withdrawals from it is a Money Bill. Next, he read clause (2) of Article 110 which clarifies that a Bill, however, shall not be a Money Bill merely because it provides for the imposition of fines or other pecuniary penalties, or for the payment of fees for licences or services rendered, or for the imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation of any tax by any local authority. "What is significantly omitted (from this clause (2)) is the payment of salaries, pensions, gratuities and other allowances which also come out of the CFI. And by the rules of interpretation, if you don't fall within the excepted categories, you will come under the main provisions...the subject-matter of the incidental provision can be anything whatsoever provided it is incidental to a law which would otherwise come under (c) or (d) or any other sub-clause", explained the AG. "The Finance Act has a large number of provisions regarding finance. Nobody can dispute the fact that it is covered under the definition of Money Bill. The certification of the (Lok Sabha) Speaker is not for any part of the Act but for the entire Finance Bill...Suppose a situation arises that the Rajya Sabha is unable to pass the Bill because of the majority it has, then irrespective of its objections, the Bill would be cleared as a money bill", he continued. "What is required is a nexus between the provisions of the Bill and the provisions of Article 110. There is a nexus even if the provisions are incidental to sub-clauses (a) to (f). Part XIV provides for payments of salaries, gratuities, 3 months' compensation to those who lose their jobs because of the amalgamation of Tribunals, etc. These are provisions which are incidental to the Finance Act and will squarely come within the nexus as required by (g). In fact, there is a provision by which money is to be paid back to the Central government when a Tribunal is abolished, and by virtue of Article 266, any payments to the government of India form the CFI", he argued. The AG proceeded to contend that the certification of the Speaker as to a Money Bill cannot even be the subject of judicial review in the first place. "It is only because the certification is amenable to review that the question whether a Bill is a Money Bill is gone into. Otherwise, there was no question of going into that question...In Justice (A. K.) Sikri's majority judgment (in the Aadhaar case), the question whether the Aadhaar Act is a Money Bill arose for consideration because they had agreed that it is subject to review!", weighed in Justice D. Y. Chandrachud.Justice Sikri , Author of Majority Judgment in Aadhaar Case Refuting this observation respectfully, the AG advanced that the majority, having found that the Bill was rightly introduced as a Money Bill, did not deem it necessary to deal with the question of whether it is susceptible to review. He pointed out that the majority was of the view that Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, which provides for the use of the scheme in the distribution of benefits and subsidies by the Government, falls within the parameters of the classes that can be legislated as a Money Bill and that all other provisions of the Act are incidental to this Section 7 and thus, protected by Article 110 as a Money Bill. "By the decisions of this court, it has been repeatedly held that the decision of the Speaker cannot be called into question in a court of law", asserted the AG, relying on the Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui and Yogendra Kumar Jaiswal cases in which the amendment to the UP Lokayukta Act to extend the term of the anti-graft ombudsman and the introduction of the Bihar Special Courts Act for the day-to-day trial of corruption-related offences respectively were similarly challenged and the finality of the...

[Tribunals- Day-2] If Your Lordships Finds Speaker's Certificate Invalid, Whole Finance Act With Amendments To All Statutes Will Go":AG

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