Political exigencies no reason to speed up money bill case: Centre

Political exigencies cannot be a reason to speed up the Constitution bench hearing of a clutch of petitions that seek the court to determine the subjects and objective of a draft legislation for justifying its passage as a money bill, obviating the need of Rajya Sabha oversight, the Union government submitted in the Supreme Court on Thursday.

- Utkarsh Anand

As a seven-judge bench issued procedural directions to keep the matter ready for hearing after four weeks, the petitioners, led by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, urged the court to hear the matter on priority. While the bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, said that he would look into the request, solicitor general Tushar Mehta objected to prioritising the matter.

"We would request that your lordships may go by seniority (of the cases). Priority cannot be based on political exigencies," Mehta told the bench, which also included justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. Responding, the CJI said the court would take a call.

The bunch of 22 petitions on money bill chronologically stands at the fifth position in the list of six cases before the seven-judge bench. The oldest case in the list is a petition from 1994 while the money bill case arose in 2019.