Finance Bill 2017: If Rajya Sabha's importance is diminished, Opposition has only itself to blame

The finance minister has been hauled over the coals for taking the money bill route to push through key legislations. Facing criticism in Lok Sabha from a united Opposition for tagging non-tax bills as money bills, the finance minister has quoted former Speaker GV Mavalankar to claim that when “a bill substantially deals with the imposition, abolition etc of a tax, the other provisions necessary for the achievement of the bill cannot take away from it the category of money bills.” Jaitley’s arguments that amendments on tribunals relate to government expenditure and similarly, electoral bonds are linked to political funding, may be rooted in the letter of law but are against the spirit of debate and discussion that law-enactment must be subjected to. It was heartwarming, therefore, to see Congress repose such faith in Parliament when Jairam Ramesh stood up on Thursday and trained his guns on Jaitley in Rajya Sabha, accusing him of “reducing the Parliament to complete irrelevance.” The Indian Express quoted him as saying: “The finance minister has really made a serious effort to finish off the spirit of democratic discourse, to finish off parliamentary democracy to not only reduce Rajya Sabha to irrelevance but also to reduce Lok Sabha to complete irrelevance.” Strong words. No amount of semantic jugglery would be enough to explain this as “respect for Parliamentary democracy.” Ramesh’s party colleague Divgjiaya Singh sounded anguished on Thursday about finance minister’s tactic to bypass the Rajya Sabha and “snatch away” elder lawmakers’ right to discuss, debate and frame laws. Taking the Finance Bill route, therefore, helps government bypass the Rajya Sabha’s amendments which — in keeping with government’s calculation — tried to water down the more stringent provisions that gives almost unlimited power to taxmen to go after cheats.