Is certification of a Bill as Money Bill by the Deputy Speaker valid?

The certification of a Bill as a Money Bill is, under the constitutional scheme, the exclusive function of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha under Article 110(3), and where the office of Speaker is vacant, that function can validly be discharged by whoever is lawfully performing the duties of the Speaker at that time, including a Deputy Speaker acting under Article 95(1), though the correctness of such certification remains open to a limited but real judicial scrutiny.

Constitutional Provisions Governing Money Bills

Article 110(1) defines a Money Bill as a Bill containing only provisions dealing with matters specified therein, such as the imposition, abolition, remission, alteration, or regulation of any tax, and Article 110(3) provides that if a question arises whether a Bill is a Money Bill, the decision of the Speaker of the House of the People thereon shall be final. Article 110(4) further requires that every Money Bill, when transmitted to the Council of States or presented to the President for assent, must bear a certificate of the Speaker signed by his hand that it is a Money Bill. The significance of this classification is considerable, since under Article 109, a Money Bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha's role is confined to making recommendations within fourteen days which the Lok Sabha may accept or reject, and it never requires the Rajya Sabha's concurrence, a route that bypasses the usual bicameral scrutiny that other Bills receive.

The Role of the Deputy Speaker

Article 93 provides for the election of a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha, and Article 95(1) provides that when the office of Speaker is vacant, the duties of the office shall be performed by the Deputy Speaker, or if that office is also vacant, by such member of the House as the President may appoint. Article 100(1) additionally clarifies that all questions in the House are to be decided by a majority of votes present and voting, other than the Speaker or the person acting as Speaker, who does not ordinarily vote except to give a casting vote in the event of an equality of votes. Reading Article 95(1) together with Article 110(3), the constitutional position is that "the Speaker" for purposes of certifying a Money Bill is not confined to the person formally holding that title but extends to whoever is lawfully performing the functions of that office at the relevant time, since Article 95 exists precisely to ensure that the office does not fall vacant for want of a person to discharge its duties.

Judicial Treatment of Money Bill Certification

The finality clause in Article 110(3) has generated significant litigation over whether the Speaker's certification is truly beyond judicial review, and the Supreme Court's evolving position bears directly on how confidently one can assert the validity of a certification made by a Deputy Speaker or any officiating Speaker.

In K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, popularly known as the Aadhaar case, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, by majority, upheld the certification of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 as a Money Bill by the Speaker, holding that the decision of the Speaker under Article 110(3) is final and cannot ordinarily be questioned in a court of law, though the majority did examine the actual content of the Act to conclude that it satisfied the definition in Article 110(1). Justice Chandrachud, dissenting, held that the finality clause under Article 110(3) does not oust judicial review altogether, and that courts retain the power to examine whether a Bill genuinely falls within the scope of Article 110(1), since permitting the Speaker's certification to be treated as wholly unreviewable would allow the Money Bill route to be misused to bypass the Rajya Sabha even for legislation that does not, in substance, deal only with the matters listed in that Article.

This unresolved tension was addressed more directly in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd., where a Constitution Bench doubted the correctness of the majority reasoning in the Aadhaar case regarding the scope of Article 110(1) and referred the question of the extent of judicial review over Money Bill certification to a larger Bench, a reference that remains a significant unsettled area of constitutional law. The Court in Rojer Mathew nonetheless proceeded on the basis that the Speaker's decision, while entitled to great respect, is not entirely beyond the pale of judicial scrutiny where a Bill patently contains provisions falling outside Article 110(1), such as substantive provisions unrelated to taxation or the Consolidated Fund, since allowing such certification to stand unreviewed would permit routine circumvention of the Rajya Sabha's constitutional role.

Applying This to Certification by a Deputy Speaker

Nothing in Article 110(3) or the case law suggests that the certifying authority must personally hold the substantive title of Speaker rather than be a person lawfully discharging that office under Article 95(1); the constitutional scheme treats the officiating Speaker as fully vested with the powers of the office for the duration of the vacancy. Article 122(1) reinforces this by providing that the validity of any proceedings in Parliament shall not be called in question on the ground of any alleged irregularity of procedure, a provision the Supreme Court has read as barring challenges based on mere procedural irregularity while still permitting challenges based on substantive illegality or unconstitutionality, a distinction drawn clearly in cases dealing with the scope of Article 122. Applying this framework, a certification made by a Deputy Speaker validly acting as Speaker under Article 95(1) would ordinarily be treated as a valid exercise of the power under Article 110(3), since the constitutional office, not the individual occupant's formal title, is what Article 110(3) contemplates; the certification would be vulnerable to challenge only on the same limited ground recognised in Rojer Mathew and the dissent in the Aadhaar case, namely that the Bill so certified patently fails to satisfy the substantive definition in Article 110(1), not merely because the certifying hand belonged to a Deputy Speaker rather than the Speaker.

Illustration

Suppose the Speaker of the Lok Sabha is unable to function due to a pending motion for removal or a vacancy following resignation, and the Deputy Speaker, duly discharging the Speaker's functions under Article 95(1), certifies a taxation statute as a Money Bill under Article 110(4). Such certification would be constitutionally valid in form, since the Deputy Speaker is, for that period, "the Speaker" within the meaning of Article 110(3). If, however, the certified Bill in substance contained provisions extending well beyond the matters listed in Article 110(1), such as substantive amendments to unrelated regulatory frameworks bundled into a taxation statute, the certification would face the same vulnerability to judicial scrutiny that the Aadhaar Act's certification faced, regardless of whether the certifying officer was the Speaker or an officiating Deputy Speaker.

The certification of a Bill as a Money Bill by a Deputy Speaker lawfully acting in the Speaker's stead is, therefore, constitutionally valid in principle, drawing its authority from the combined operation of Articles 95(1) and 110(3), though the substantive correctness of any such certification, whether made by the Speaker or an officiating Deputy Speaker, remains subject to the still-unsettled question of judicial review that the Supreme Court has left open for authoritative resolution by a larger Bench following Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd.