Under Article 110 a Money Bill May Contain Only Tax, Borrowing and Consolidated Fund Matters, the Speaker Certifies It, and the Rajya Sabha Gets 14 Days to Recommend Changes the Lok Sabha Can Ignore

A Money Bill is a Bill that contains only provisions on the matters listed in Article 110(1) of the Constitution: taxes, government borrowing, the Union’s main account (the Consolidated Fund of India), and anything incidental to those. It can start only in the Lok Sabha, the directly elected House of the People, and the Speaker of that House certifies that it qualifies. The Rajya Sabha, the Council of States, then has 14 days to return it with recommendations, and the Lok Sabha may accept or reject any of them.

The Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, and the procedure covers the money business of each Union Budget. The Rajya Sabha Secretariat records that the Appropriation Bill and the Finance Bill are both certified as Money Bills. Its edges have been tested in the Supreme Court over the Aadhaar Act, 2016 and the Finance Act, 2017, and in 2019 a five-judge Bench asked a larger Bench to settle the scope of Article 110(1), including what its word “only” demands. For how the House itself is built and what else it can do, see our piece on how the Rajya Sabha works.

What Article 110 allows a Money Bill to contain

Article 110(1) lists seven matters. Sub-clauses (a) to (f) cover imposing, abolishing, remitting, altering or regulating any tax; regulating government borrowing and guarantees; the custody of, and payments into or out of, the Consolidated Fund and the Contingency Fund; appropriating money from the Consolidated Fund; declaring an expenditure to be “charged” on that Fund, or increasing one; and receipts into the Consolidated Fund or the public account, along with the audit of the Union’s and the States’ accounts. A charged expenditure is paid without a vote in Parliament under Article 113(1), and Article 112(3)(d)(i) is one example: it charges the salaries, allowances and pensions of Supreme Court judges. Sub-clause (g) adds “any matter incidental” to the rest.

Clause (2) says fines, fees for licences or services, and taxes levied by a local authority for local purposes do not by themselves make a Bill a Money Bill. Clause (3) says that if a question arises, the Speaker’s decision “shall be final”. Clause (4) requires the Speaker’s signed certificate on the Bill when it goes to the Rajya Sabha and again when it goes to the President for assent.

The word “only” was argued over before the article was adopted. On 20 May 1949 Ghanshyam Singh Gupta moved in the Constituent Assembly to delete it from what was then draft article 90, warning that a Bill carrying one extra provision might fail to count as a Money Bill and calling the word “dangerous”. Naziruddin Ahmad backed him and called the word misplaced. B. R. Ambedkar said the article needed further consideration, and it was held back. When it returned on 8 June 1949 the Assembly voted on the deletion, negatived it, and adopted the article.

Fourteen days, and what the Rajya Sabha can do with them

After the Lok Sabha passes a Money Bill, it goes to the Rajya Sabha with the Speaker’s certificate. Under Article 109 the Rajya Sabha must return it within 14 days of receiving it, either with recommendations or with a message that it has none. The Lok Sabha may accept or reject all or any recommendation. If it accepts some, the Bill is deemed passed with those changes. If it accepts none, or the 14 days run out, the Bill is deemed passed as the Lok Sabha passed it.

A deadlock cannot arise, so the joint sitting that Article 108 allows for ordinary Bills does not apply: the article’s proviso excludes a Money Bill. The Secretariat lists three joint sittings, in 1961, 1978 and 2002, all on ordinary Bills, and says the power to recommend amendments to a Money Bill is one the House of Lords in Britain does not have. The Supreme Court traces the Indian arrangement to the Parliament Act, 1911, passed after the Lords stalled budget Bills in 1909.

The clock is short in practice. The Finance Bill, 2017 passed the Lok Sabha on 22 March 2017. The Rajya Sabha returned it with recommendations on 29 March, the Lok Sabha rejected them on 30 March, and the Finance Act came into effect on 31 March after assent.

The arrangement has been questioned from inside Parliament. When the Rajya Sabha took up the Indian Income-Tax (Amendment) Bill, 1953 on 29 April 1953, the Law Minister suggested the House might ask how the Speaker’s certificate had come to be given. Members of the Lok Sabha called the remarks unjustifiable, and on 1 May the Rajya Sabha passed a resolution directing its Leader to stay away from the Lok Sabha debate on them. The Prime Minister then told the Rajya Sabha that “it is the two Houses together that are the Parliament of India.”

Money Bills, Financial Bills and the Budget

Article 117 sorts the rest. A Bill that makes provision for Article 110 matters but also covers other ground is a Financial Bill of the first category. It cannot start in the Rajya Sabha or without the President’s recommendation, and in other respects the Secretariat treats it like an ordinary Bill. A Bill that would merely spend from the Consolidated Fund is a second-category Financial Bill under Article 117(3): it can start in either House but cannot be passed by a House unless the President has recommended it to that House.

The Budget runs on this split. Article 113 sends the demands for grants, the ministries’ spending requests, to the Lok Sabha alone, which may agree, refuse or cut. The Appropriation Bill that follows, and the Finance Bill that carries the tax changes, are then Money Bills, and Article 114(3) lets no money leave the Consolidated Fund except under a law passed in that way. Our piece on how a Budget session runs has the 2026 calendar.

Who decides, and whether a court can look behind the certificate

Article 110(3) calls the Speaker’s decision final, and Article 122(1) says the validity of proceedings in Parliament cannot be questioned for an alleged irregularity of procedure. The Rojer Mathew judgment records that in Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui (2014) and Yogendra Kumar Jaiswal (2016), both about state Money Bills, the Court declined to review a Speaker’s certificate.

The Aadhaar judgment of 26 September 2018 moved the law. Justice Ashok Bhushan held that the certificate is not immune from judicial review, and Justice D. Y. Chandrachud, in dissent, agreed. Justice A. K. Sikri, writing for the Chief Justice, Justice A. M. Khanwilkar and himself, said “judicial review would be admissible under certain circumstances” but did not need to decide the point.

In Rojer Mathew on 13 November 2019 a five-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi endorsed review and fenced it in. It read “final” as binding the members of both Houses without making the decision unchallengeable in court, and it added a presumption of legality for the Speaker. Review, it said, “must be restricted to only the very extreme instance where there is a complete disregard to the Constitutional scheme itself”.

The Aadhaar Act, 2016

An ordinary Bill on the same subject had been tried first. The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 3 December 2010, and a Standing Committee on Finance reported against it in December 2011. It was withdrawn from the Rajya Sabha on 3 March 2016, the day PRS records the Aadhaar Bill’s introduction in the Lok Sabha. PRS lists the Lok Sabha’s passage on 11 March and the Rajya Sabha’s return on 16 March. The Quint reported that the Rajya Sabha recommended five amendments and that the Lok Sabha rejected all five within hours. The President assented on 25 March 2016. For the system itself, see our piece on Aadhaar.

Justice Sikri’s opinion for three judges said Article 110 is the only exception to the rule that both Houses must pass a Bill, so “strict interpretation has to be accorded to Article 110”. It then turned to section 7, which makes authentication a condition for subsidies, benefits and services paid from the Consolidated Fund. The petitioners accepted that section 7 had the elements of a Money Bill and was the main provision. The Court held the provisions they attacked, among them sections 23(2)(h), 54(2)(m) and 57 of the Act, to be incidental under sub-clause (g), and that the Bill was “rightly introduced as Money Bill”. Justice Bhushan concurred.

Justice Chandrachud’s dissent made three points. Section 7 does not declare any expenditure a charge on the Consolidated Fund; it only attaches a requirement to expenditure that is already charged. The Act’s other provisions fall outside Article 110. And bicameralism is part of the Constitution’s basic structure. He wrote that passing a Bill as a Money Bill when it does not qualify “constitutes a fraud on the Constitution” and that a ruling party’s lack of a majority in the Rajya Sabha cannot justify bypassing it. The majority was four to one.

A five-judge Bench dismissed the review petitions on 20 January 2021, again four to one. Justice Chandrachud said, in LiveLaw’s account, that the petitions should stay pending until the larger Bench answered the questions referred in Rojer Mathew.

The Finance Act, 2017 and the question sent to seven judges

The Finance Bill, 2017 was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 1 February 2017 with 150 clauses and seven schedules. On 21 March the Finance Minister moved an amendment adding a new Part, later numbered XIV, with 34 clauses and two schedules. It merged tribunals and moved the qualifications, appointment, tenure and service conditions of their members to rules the Central Government would make. Chief Justice Gogoi’s opinion says it amended 25 central laws, and Justice Chandrachud’s says its Eighth Schedule lists 19 tribunals. The Speaker, as the Court records the ruling, held that a Finance Bill may carry non-tax proposals as incidental provisions.

A tribunal-service Bill had been tried first as an ordinary Bill. The Appellate Tribunals and Other Authorities (Conditions of Service) Bill, 2014 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 19 February 2014, examined by a Standing Committee, which reported on 26 February 2015, and withdrawn on 11 April 2017. In the Supreme Court the Attorney General argued that tribunal members are paid from the Consolidated Fund, so the rest was incidental, and that a Bill’s dominant provisions fix its character. The petitioners relied on the word “only”.

On 13 November 2019 Chief Justice Gogoi’s opinion observed that the Aadhaar majority had not substantially discussed the effect of “only” and that its reading of the Aadhaar Act’s other provisions as incidental was “arguably liberal”. Because the Aadhaar Bench was of equal strength, the Bench directed that the question go to a larger Bench.

Justice Chandrachud, part-dissenting, answered the Money Bill question himself. He held that a non-fiscal matter fits in a Money Bill only if it is incidental to a matter in sub-clauses (a) to (f), that a bearing on the Consolidated Fund is not enough because almost every government action has one, and that Part XIV did not qualify.

What is still open

The route is still in use. The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2026 would raise the Court’s strength from 33 judges to 37, excluding the Chief Justice, and replaced an ordinance issued in May 2026. PRS records its introduction in the Lok Sabha on 20 July 2026 and its passage there on 3 August. LiveLaw reports that the Rajya Sabha considered and returned it on 5 August, and ETV Bharat describes it as a Money Bill.

The Constitution already charges judges’ salaries on the Consolidated Fund, and Article 124(1) leaves the number of judges to Parliament by law. In a column dated 21 August 2026, Arya Patel and Samarth Luthra argued that the Bill itself changes only the Court’s composition, that the costs come from other provisions, and that financial consequences alone should not turn ordinary legislation into a Money Bill.

On 12 October 2023 a seven-judge Bench met on the Rojer Mathew reference, named two counsel to compile the submissions, and listed the matters for hearing on 30 January 2024. The Supreme Court Observer reports that the Court’s judgment on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, directed that a Money Bill challenge to its amendments be taken up in Rojer Mathew. The Observer’s page on the case lists it as pending, with its last update on 19 August 2025.