Rojer Mathew v South Indian Bank Ltd

Facts

• Part XIV of the Finance Act, 2017 amended a large number of statutes so as to merge and reorganise tribunals and appellate tribunals.
• Section 184 of the Act empowered the Central Government to make rules providing for the qualifications, appointment, term of office, salaries and allowances, removal and other conditions of service of the Chairpersons and members of those tribunals.
• Rules framed under that power in 2017 were challenged as leaving the composition and independence of the tribunals to executive discretion.
• The Finance Act, 2017 had been certified by the Speaker as a Money Bill and passed accordingly, so the Council of States had had no power to reject it.
• The petitioners contended that provisions on the constitution and staffing of tribunals answer none of the matters listed in Art.110(1) and could not have been enacted through a Money Bill.
• Reliance was placed on the majority reasoning in the Aadhaar decision and on Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui v State of Uttar Pradesh (2014) for the contrary position.

Issue

1. Whether provisions unconnected with the matters in Art.110(1) may be enacted through a Money Bill; whether the Speaker's certificate is amenable to judicial review; and whether the delegation in Section 184 was excessive.

Held

• The rules framed under Section 184 were struck down as suffering from excessive delegation, the statute having failed to supply adequate guidance on matters going to the independence of the tribunals, and the Court directed that appointments continue under the parent statutes pending fresh rules. On the Money Bill question, the Court declined to decide, but doubted the correctness of Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui and of the reasoning of the majority in the Aadhaar decision, observing that the scope of Art.110 and the extent to which the Speaker's certificate may be reviewed require authoritative resolution, and referred those questions to a larger Bench.

Ratio Decidendi

Article 110(1) uses the word "only", so a Bill containing matters outside the enumerated list is not a Money Bill on the Constitution's own terms. Whether a particular Bill satisfies that definition is therefore a question of constitutional interpretation, distinct from an irregularity of internal procedure of the kind Art.122 protects. On delegation, the essential legislative function of prescribing the qualifications and tenure that secure a tribunal's independence cannot be handed to the executive whose decisions those tribunals review, since that would compromise the very adjudicatory independence the tribunal exists to provide.