What Constitutes a Money Bill Must Be Interpreted in Strictest Terms

On day 15 of the Aadhaar hearings, Senior Counsels Arvind Datar and P. Chidambaram appeared on behalf of the petitioners. The hearings began with Datar submitting that the introduction of the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill was unconstitutional and that it should have been treated as a Financial Bill. He further submitted that though Article 110 specifically states that the Speaker of the Lok Sabha decides whether a Bill is a Money Bill or not, this Article is not beyond the scope of judicial review. Referring to his earlier argument regarding the Prevention of Money Laundering Rules, 2017, he mentioned that these Rules defeated the concept of consent. Meaning that if a person does not consent to get an Aadhaar card, then that person’s account will be frozen.

He referred to the previous Orders and Judgements of the Supreme Court on various issues related to Aadhaar. In these Orders, the Supreme Court had upheld the right to privacy and declared that Aadhaar would be voluntary until the matter had been disposed of except for six specific social security schemes. He also challenged the Aadhaar Act on the ground of ‘reasonableness’ under Article 14, in the light of State of West Bengal vs. Anwar Ali Sarkar.

Following this submission, Senior Counsel P. Chidambaram began his arguments with regard to the issue of introducing the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill. To this effect, he submitted that a Money Bill is a subset of Finance Bills, however, specific conditions have to be met for a Bill to be a Money Bill. He further submitted that since Money Bills curtail the powers of the Rajya Sabha and the President, to define what constitutes a Money Bill must be interpreted in the strictest terms. Chidambaram compared Article 103 which provides for the President to obtain the opinion of the Election Commission before disqualifying an MP, and Article 110 which states that the opinion of the Speaker is final regarding what constitutes a Money Bill.

Justice Chandrachud observed that if the Bench were to consider extending the deadline to link Aadhaar in the final week of March, it would result in confusion among financial institutions. This would arise as these institutions would continue operating on the belief that March 31 is the deadline. The recommendation to decide on extending the deadline in the final week was made by the Attorney General in the previous hearing. The Bench then decided to consider the matter upon the conclusion of Chidambaram’s arguments.