What is a Money Bill - Can there be no Lady Speaker of the Lok Sabha?
AS per Article 110 (1) of the Constitution,
A Bill shall be deemed to be a Money Bill if it contains only provisions dealing with all or any of the following matters, namely-
(a) the imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation of any tax;
(b) the regulation of the borrowing of money or the giving of any guarantee by the Government of India, or the amendment of the law with respect to any financial obligations undertaken or to be undertaken by the Government of India;
(c) the custody of the Consolidated Fund or the Contingency Fund of India, the payment of moneys into or the withdrawal of moneys from any such Fund;
(d) the appropriation of moneys out of the Consolidated Fund of India;
(e) the declaring of any expenditure to be expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India or the increasing of the amount of any such expenditure;
(f) the receipt of money on account of the Consolidated Fund of India or the public account of India or the custody or issue of such money or the audit of the accounts of the Union or of a State; or
(g) any matter incidental to any of the matters specified in sub-clause (a) to (f).
As per Article 110(3), If any question arises whether a Bill is a Money Bill or not, the decision of the Speaker of the House of the People thereon shall be final.
As per Article 110(4), There shall be endorsed on every Money Bill when it is transmitted to the Council of States under Article 109, and when it is presented to the President for assent under Article 111, the certificate of the Speaker of the House of the People signed by him that it is a Money Bill.
This "him" was the matter of a debate in the Rajya Sabha yesterday. A Member raised an objection that the Bill had to be signed by him (not her).
The Leader of the House and Finance Minister Mr. Jaitley said, I am still not able to digest the new Marxist argument that because the Constitution requires the Money Bill to be signed by 'him', so a lady Speaker's signature is not adequate. I don't know whether such an argument could be seriously... I am actually shocked by this argument…. If you say this ...... the Speaker must necessarily be a man and cannot be a lady…….Then the natural analogy is that the Speaker can only be a male….