What happens during the budget discussion? Only five or ten minutes are allowed to a member to discuss an important financial item. He could not place properly and explicitly his viewpoint before the House. A number of members have to speak and within the seven days allotted for the Demands nothing material ultimately turns out. After the clamour of the members during the last session, three more days were allowed but I must say straight away that even those extra three days were merely given to the members to ventilate their views and nothing substantial was done. We want that the members should have a stronghold on each item spent by the executive. Unfortunately few members take interest in the budget. Perhaps they do not understand it. Finance is a complicated item and obviously members are at sea at times. The executive, under Contingencies and other headings, provide lakhs of rupees without any details and the House has to pass them. Do you want to give that kind of power to the executive still? How are we going to influence the Government unless the until sufficient time is given to the members to place their views before the House? It is one of the fundamental duties of a member to voice his views and those of his electorate, otherwise he is not worth being returned by the people to this House. Our people want to know what kind of taxes are being imposed, what is the necessity for them and how the Government propose to spend the money. If members have no opportunity to ventilate their views and those of the people who returned them, there will be no value in their being members of the legislature. Today we are ourselves the masters and yet Dr. Deshmukh has the audacity the effrontery to come and say “I do not want this. The present procedure is very good and there is no necessity to change the nomenclature. Parliament will do its duty.” It was very surprising. I thought every member of the House would welcome the proposal of exercising his rights properly. I am sorry for the opposing to this. I wholeheartedly welcome the proposition and I repeat that if you leave it to Parliament, the Ministers will combine and never allow you to go into the details of the Budget. Therefore, the provision in the Constitution suggested by Dr. Ambedkar is very necessary. I am sure the House will give credit to the Drafting Committee that, even at this late stage, from our experience of the last two Sessions of Parliament, they have come to the right decision what while the Auditor-General alone should be a watch-dog, members also should be watch-dogs of finances of the State. We could give on credit certain amount for salaries of the staff etc. before 31st March. The House can then have ample time to go item by item and reduce or increase the demand. The executive will then have no alternative but to accept it.
