Jairam Ramesh moves Supreme Court against treating Aadhaar bill as money bill

The controversy now takes a new twist as it is generally believed that the Speaker’s discretion is final in the matter.

Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh. File photo

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has moved the Supreme Court challenging the decision to treat Aadhaar bill as a money bill, which was passed during Budget session in March 2016, overruling amendments moved in the Rajya Sabha.

“Yesterday I have filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the decision to treat Aadhaar as a money bill,” Mr. Ramesh said in New Delhi.

With this, the controversy over treating the Aadhaar law as a money bill, which refuses to die down ever since its passage, has taken a new twist as it is generally believed that Speaker’s discretion is final in the matter.

Accusing the BJP-led NDA government of showing “utter contempt” of the Rajya Sabha for taking the money bill route to pass the Aadhaar bill, the opposition party had earlier indicated that the matter could be challenged in the court.

Rejecting the Rajya Sabha’s five amendments and the Opposition’s appeal not to make “haste”, the Lok Sabha had on March 16, 2016 adopted the Aadhaar (targeted delivery of financial and other subsidies, benefits and services) Bill, 2016, by a voice vote after rejecting the recommendations for five amendments made by the Upper House earlier in the evening.

Armed with the Speaker’s decision that it was a money bill, the government pushed it in the Rajya Sabha, which cannot amend it but only make recommendations for amendment to the Lok Sabha.

Once the Lok Sabha passes a money bill with or without amendments recommended by the Rajya Sabha, it is deemed to have been passed by both the Houses.

Showing urgency in getting the law through, the government, which enjoys a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha, had brought the measure to the lower house within an hour of being returned by the Rajya Sabha.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who moved the bill and piloted them in both the Houses, had also turned down opposition argument that Parliament cannot legislate since the matter is before Supreme Court.

Parliament cannot abdicate its duty under the Constitution which clearly separates powers among various institutions, he had said.

Mr. Ramesh while proposing amendments in the bill in the Rajya Sabha, had then expressed “anguish” that the bill was brought as a money bill, an act he likened to “knocking a nail in the coffin of the Upper House”.