House Motions: The cut and the thrust

What is a cut motion?

The Budget goes through two stages of discussion in Parliament,namely the General Discussion followed by a more detailed discussion and voting on the demands for grants. During the General Discussion,members deal with only the general aspect of the financial policy of the government and do not go into details of taxation and expenditure. It is in the latter stage that separate demands are made for grants proposed for each ministry. These “demands” are in the nature of requests made by the Executive to the Lok Sabha for grant of authority to spend the amount asked for. The Rajya Sabha has no business with the Budget beyond the general discussion. Voting on demands is the preserve of the Lok Sabha. Members can disprove a policy,suggest measures for economy or focus attention on a specific grievance by moving a subsidiary motion to the main motion for demands for grants. These motions are called “cut motions” and these are of three types:

Disapproval of policy cut: The most drastic of the three,it says that the “amount of demand be reduced to Re 1”, implying that the mover disapproves of the policy underlying the demand.

Economy cut: Seeks to reduce the demand by a specific sum.

Token cut: Says the amount be reduced by Rs 100. The most widely used form of cut motion,it is used to voice a particular grievance.

What happens if a cut motion is carried through in voting?

Since cut motions are usually moved by Opposition members,if one goes through,it amounts to a vote of no-confidence against the government. It has to quit.

What is guillotine?

On the last day allotted to consider all the demands,those not disposed of so far are put to vote,whether they have been discussed or not. This process is referred to as guillotine. On Tuesday,the day the cut motions were moved in the Lok Sabha by the Opposition,Speaker Meira Kumar upheld the right of a member to move cut motions on demands for grants that were not discussed in the House — in this case,specifically,the issue of urea and petrol price hike. She overruled an earlier 2003 ruling which allowed cut motions to be moved only on those demands that were discussed by the House and not those that were put through the guillotine.

What is the Finance Bill and how is it different from the Budget?

After the presentation of the Budget and the discussion on it,the Appropriation Bill is introduced in the Lok Sabha giving legal authority to the government to appropriate expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India. This is followed by the Finance Bill,incorporating all the financial proposals of the government for the year. The Finance Bill has to be passed by Parliament and assented to by the President within 75 days of its introduction. If the Bill,once passed on to the Rajya Sabha,is not returned to the Lok Sabha within 14 days,it shall be deemed to have been passed by both the Houses.