Opinion A short circuit

Several regulators have flagged concerns, including conflict of interest, in what they term as the “tangential route” taken by the government to merge eight tribunals and the changing of rules for appointments, carried out through amendments to the Finance Bill 2017, approved by Parliament last week. It is not just quasi regulators that are worried. The government brought about 40 amendments this time, many related to several other laws, in a money bill which intrinsically deals with taxation and its regulation, government spending, borrowings and the use of funds under the Consolidated Fund of India. The scale of amendments to a Finance Bill is unprecedented. It raises questions of parliamentary scrutiny and debate on laws, besides the short-circuiting of established procedures.

The government may have been prompted by the fact that it doesn’t have the required numbers in the Rajya Sabha. By bunching together amendments to other laws — which propose to make Aadhaar cards mandatory for filing income tax returns, remove the cap of 7.5 per cent of the average net profits in the past three financial years for corporates to donate to political parties keeping the names of political parties confidential, give greater powers to tax officials and merge tribunals — the government has obviated the need to secure the approval of the Upper House, which cannot reject a money bill. Such recourse to a non-transparent way of law-making poses the danger of little or limited oversight by Parliament of important legislation. But it is not just that debate has been short-circuited on amendments to laws not related to finance. The government’s way also raises issues of accountability.

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What is most worrying is what this says about the government’s approach to crucial legislation. In an earlier instance, too, it had attempted to surmount resistance, including from the RBI, by incorporating provisions in the Finance Bill, which effectively led to changes to other laws, thus opening the door for governments in the future to take a similar route that undermines accountability. It may well be tempting for a government now in its third year and bolstered by the recent electoral success in India’s most populous state to attempt reform by stealth, citing technicalities. But the flip side to that is not just poor oversight but also the danger of shoddy law-making. What should also be a worry is the growing disengagement of many of India’s law-makers with the budget process and key legislation. That leaves only the prospect of a judicial challenge, if at all, to the new approach to law-making. On Wednesday, Veerappa Moily, a former law minister, suggested that members of the Rajya Sabha should quit if they had “some pride left” considering that the Upper House has little role in law-making now. The exhortation was extreme but the indignation resonates.