Finance Act as Money Bill: Decision of Speaker cannot be subject to judicial review, Attorney General

The decision of Speaker to categorise a Bill as money bill is beyond the scope of judicial review, Attorney General KK Venugopal submitted before the Supreme Court today..He was making arguments before a Constitution Bench in a batch of petitions challenging the validity of provisions relating to tribunals in the Finance Act, 2017..The hearing today began with Senior Counsel Arvind Datar resuming his submissions. Datar argued on the difference between a Money Bill and Finance Bill and submitted that the Finance Act should not have been introduced as a Money Bill in the Parliament. Datar also quoted heavily from the minority judgment in the Aadhaar case to buttress his submissions..Attorney General KK Venugopal began his submissions a little before the Bench rose for lunch and his arguments continued in the post-lunch session..The crux of the arguments advanced by the AG was that the decision of the Speaker to categorise the Finance Bill, 2017 as a Money Bill cannot be subject to Judicial review..It was argued that Article 122 of the Constitution states that the conduct of business and Proceedings of the parliament cannot be questioned before the Court of Law..Venugopal stressed that considering the majority judgement in the Aadhaar case is applicable, the question of judicial review ought not to arise while making submissions regarding the aspect of Money Bill..Venugopal further added that the challenge to the Bill cannot be selectively made on the restricted point of Tribunals alone. It was his contention that if the challenge is made, it should cover the entirety of the Bill..The Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices NV Ramana, DY Chandrachud, Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna will continue hearing the case on Tuesday. Venugopal is expected to resume his arguments on Tuesday..Read the order below. .Bar & Bench is available on WhatsApp. For real-time updates on stories, Click here to subscribe to our WhatsApp.