Autopilot Parliament: Advocacy for Executive Discretion Disturbing

Controversies around spending discretion can corrode credibility faster than external interference ever could.

By P SESH KUMAR

New Delhi, October 12, 2025 — In a thoughtful yet controversial essay on The Policy Lab (TIOL, 2025), the author (Mr J.B. Mohapatra) revisits one of the Constitution’s most delicate fiscal mechanisms—the idea of “charged expenditure.” Arguing from the standpoint of parity and principle, he suggests that Parliament should consider classifying more categories of spending as charged on the Consolidated Fund of India, particularly those tied to statutory guarantees such as the Right to Education Act (RTE), MGNREGA, and the National Food Security Act (NFSA).

The author’s underlying appeal is for fairness and uniformity: if the CVC, Lokpal, and UPSC are insulated from political pressures through non-votable funding, why not the Election Commission or core welfare programmes backed by central Acts?

While the sincerity and intellectual consistency argued in the article is appreciable, extending the “charged” umbrella to cover social-sector schemes risks subverting the Constitution’s intent, undermine parliamentary accountability, and harm fiscal rigidity.

A more balanced reform lies in strengthening the financial autonomy of constitutional watchdogs, not in constitutionalising recurring welfare spending.

The Idea the Author is Driving At

At the heart of the TIOL argument is a profound discomfort with arbitrariness. The author sees no consistent policy or principle guiding which expenditures are declared “charged” under Article 112(3) of the Constitution. Parliament, he notes, has the discretion to classify any expenditure as charged, but that power is used selectively and without a coherent rationale.

The result, he argues, is an illogical disparity: some constitutional or statutory entities enjoy full budgetary insulation while others, equally deserving, remain dependent on annual parliamentary vote.

The article builds its case on two strands of “parity.” The first is institutional parity. It asks why, if the UPSC, Lokpal, and CVC have their expenditures charged, the Election Commission of India-a constitutional body entrusted with ensuring free and fair elections-is not accorded the same protection.

The second is programmatic parity. The author observes that certain ministerial expenditures, even without statutory underpinnings, are included in the charged category, whereas landmark rights-based welfare programmes such as MGNREGA, RTE, and NFSA, which flow directly from parliamentary statutes, are not.

From these examples, the author infers a broader principle: any expenditure that enforces a constitutional or statutory obligation of the state should be protected from the volatility of political change and therefore deserve “charged” status.

His reasoning flows from a constitutionalist concern for stability-ensuring that once the state undertakes an obligation towards its citizens, it cannot be casually reversed or starved of funds due to shifting political priorities.

Why the Argument is Intellectually Coherent but Practically Flawed

There is much to admire in the author’s framing. His appeal to consistency and transparency in fiscal classification is unassailable. The Constituent Assembly Debates, notably K. T. Shah’s interventions, had already anticipated the dangers of leaving vast expenditures outside parliamentary control, but they also feared the reverse-exempting too much from the annual vote.

The framers drew a careful line: independence for constitutional offices, flexibility for government programmes.

The first half of the author’s argument-granting charged status to the Election Commission’s administrative expenses-is both logical and long overdue. Even the Supreme Court in Anoop Baranwal v Union of India (2023) emphasised the need to free the Commission from executive dependence. Creating a separate Election Commission Secretariat and charging its administrative costs on the Consolidated Fund would be fully consistent with Article 324’s spirit and with the protection already given to the CAG and UPSC. It would strengthen institutional integrity without undermining fiscal discipline.

Where the article crosses a constitutional red line is in extending this logic to welfare schemes. Rights-based programmes like MGNREGA, RTE, or NFSA are vital, but they are instruments of policy, not autonomous constitutional entities. Their budgets must remain subject to Parliament’s vote because such scrutiny is the essence of democratic control over finance.

If these programmes are reclassified as “charged,” they would escape annual legislative debate, effectively locking billions of rupees into non-votable entitlements that no future government could adjust or reprioritise without amending the Constitution.

That would be fiscal paralysis dressed as reform. Already, more than half of India’s Union expenditure is committed to interest payments, salaries, and pensions-all “charged.” To add vast social-sector outlays to that list would suffocate capital investment, shrink fiscal space, and render annual Budgets little more than accounting formalities. In practical terms, Parliament would lose its central function: to examine, approve, or challenge the government’s spending priorities and seek accountability for outcomes.

Globally, parliamentary democracies treat the concept of charged expenditure with restraint. In the United Kingdom-the model for India’s financial provisions-only debt charges and constitutional officers are so protected. The rest of government spending, including social welfare, remains subject to legislative vote.

The principle is simple: what requires independence should be shielded; what demands accountability must stay open to scrutiny.

The Hidden Assumption: Integrity of the “Charged” Spender

Underlying the proposal to expand charged expenditure is a crucial, often unspoken, assumption-that institutions insulated from annual parliamentary vote will themselves exercise utmost propriety and proportion in their use of funds. Yet experience shows this faith is not always vindicated. Autonomy without internal restraint can breed complacency or even misuse.

Recent murmurs about alleged irregularities in construction-related contracts and sports-quota recruitments in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) during the tenure of one of the very recent incumbents-reported by independent investigative platforms such as The Probe—serve as a cautionary tale.

Even a constitutional body vested with the moral authority to audit others may not be immune to lapses in its own financial conduct. If institutions that enjoy “charged” funding fail to model probity, public confidence in the very logic of financial independence begins to erode. The privilege of non-votable expenditure, therefore, demands not only legal immunity but a heightened ethical obligation to transparency, restraint, and public justification.

Before widening this circle of privilege, Parliament must ensure that those already within it are exemplars of accountability, not exceptions to it.

The Auditability Paradox

There is another, more structural danger. If trillions of rupees of government spending were to move into the category of charged expenditure, the chain of audit accountability would loosen. Technically, the CAG retains the mandate to audit both charged and voted expenditure under Article 151, but the effectiveness of that audit depends on Parliament’s power to question, direct, or act upon its findings through the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

When large volumes of expenditure are no longer votable, legislative interest in post-audit scrutiny inevitably wanes. Worse, the irony is profound: the CAG himself operates under a charged budget. Enlarging that domain would mean that one constitutional authority, funded without legislative vote, is auditing vast expenditures also beyond legislative vote.

The entire ecosystem of financial accountability would risk turning circular and self-referential. Audit findings, unbacked by enforceable parliamentary sanction, would carry little more than moral weight. The constitutional promise of audit as an instrument of democratic control would shrink to a ritual of record-keeping.

The Deeper Implication: A Parliament on Autopilot

If the TIOL proposal were applied wholesale, it would gradually hollow out Parliament’s “power of the purse.” Every rights-based programme could claim immunity from the vote, invoking moral and statutory obligation. The Budget debate-already ritualised-would lose its teeth entirely. What begins as a quest for parity would end as a silent fiscal coup, transferring Parliament’s discretionary power to bureaucratic inertia.

In a political-economy sense, “charging” welfare schemes could even backfire on the poor. Programmes insulated from annual evaluation tend to stagnate, their inefficiencies preserved by constitutional armour. The path to justice in a democracy lies not in locking expenditure but in sustaining deliberation-the yearly discipline of explaining, defending, and improving policies through public debate.

It is worth recalling that Article 112(3)(g) gives Parliament-not the executive-the power to declare additional items as charged. The framers thus expected discretion to be exercised rarely and judiciously, not expansively. To invoke that clause for vast recurring schemes would invert the spirit of the Constitution from empowerment of the legislature to its immobilisation.

A Sharper but Realistic Way Forward

The author’s instinct for consistency should be channelled, not dismissed. What India needs is not a wider “charged” domain but a codified policy framework for invoking it. Parliament could adopt a short, clear statute-perhaps titled The Financial Autonomy of Constitutional Authorities Act-that identifies bodies whose independence warrants non-votable funding: the Election Commission, Lokpal, CVC, and CAG among them. Their administrative (not programme) expenses should be charged, while the rest of the Budget remains votable.

For statutory welfare programmes, the better reform is not “charging” them but improving predictability through medium-term expenditure frameworks and performance-linked audits. Parliament can reaffirm its long-term commitment to rights-based entitlements without surrendering its annual oversight. This approach respects both fiscal realism and democratic control-the two pillars that Ambedkar called the twin safeguards of responsible government.

Scope of Fiscal Autonomy Extension

The TIOL article revives a fascinating constitutional debate about how far fiscal autonomy should extend. Its author is correct in demanding uniformity and fairness, and his advocacy for insulating the Election Commission deserves urgent legislative attention. But by seeking to apply the same formula to social programmes, the argument veers from constitutional prudence into fiscal romanticism.

And as recent controversies around spending discretion even within “charged” institutions remind us, autonomy without internal accountability can corrode credibility faster than external interference ever could. Enlarging the “charged” universe without reinforcing audit enforceability would, paradoxically, diminish the very oversight the Constitution designed. Independence must be ring-fenced; accountability must never be. The Constitution’s genius lies precisely in that tension-it trusts Parliament to guard the purse, not to lock it away.

(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)

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