BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 3 of 143

Correct — B, To move a proposal to reduce expenditure in the budget proposals. A cut motion is a motion moved by a member of the Lok Sabha, during the stage at which the House votes on the Demands for Grants, asking that the amount of a particular demand be reduced. Its constitutional home is Article 113(2), which says that the votable estimates shall be submitted as demands for grants to the House of the People, and that the House 'shall have power to assent, or to refuse to assent, to any demand, or to assent to any demand subject to a reduction of the amount specified therein.' That last clause — assent subject to a reduction — is the cut motion, and it is the only one of the House's three powers that needs a member to move something. The Lok Sabha's rules recognise three forms, and every one of them is a proposed reduction of a stated figure. A Policy Cut asks that the demand 'be reduced to Re 1' and signifies disapproval of the policy behind the demand, leaving the mover free to argue for an alternative policy. An Economy Cut asks that it be reduced by a specified sum, and represents the saving the mover says can be made. A Token Cut asks that it be reduced by ₹100, and exists purely to force a debate on one named grievance within the Government of India's sphere of responsibility. So the object is neither vague restraint nor day-to-day control: it is a numerical reduction proposed against the estimates in the budget, which is what option (b) says and the other three do not.

• (a)To restrict day-to-day financial expenditure of the government — A cut motion bites on the coming year's estimates while they are still proposals before the House, not on money the government is already spending. Once the Appropriation Act is passed, day-to-day drawings from the Consolidated Fund are lawful and no motion can claw them back; that spending is checked afterwards, by the Comptroller and Auditor-General's audit and the Public Accounts Committee. The option describes continuous executive oversight, which is not what a cut motion is.
• (c)To restrict the grants of the Government — The nearest miss, and the reason the stem must be read slowly. It gets the subject matter right — grants — but loses the mechanism. A cut motion does not 'restrict' a grant in general terms; it names one demand and proposes a specific reduction in the amount of it, which the House then votes on. Note also the direction: the House grants money to the government, so 'the grants of the Government' has the ownership backwards.
• (d)To restrict grants from consolidated fund of India — This one is affirmatively wrong on constitutional law, not merely imprecise. Article 112(2) splits the estimates into expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund and other expenditure, and Article 113(1) provides that the charged part 'shall not be submitted to the vote of Parliament'. Since the House never votes on charged expenditure, no cut motion can be moved against it. A cut motion reaches only the votable half — the demands for grants — so describing its object as restricting grants from the Consolidated Fund as a whole overstates it in exactly the direction the Constitution forbids.

Parliament's control of the purse runs through a fixed sequence of Articles. Article 112 requires the Annual Financial Statement — the Budget — to be laid before both Houses, showing separately the sums charged on the Consolidated Fund of India and the sums for other expenditure. Article 113 then splits the two: the charged estimates may be discussed but not voted, while the rest go to the Lok Sabha alone as demands for grants, which it may assent to, refuse, or assent to with a reduction. Article 114 turns the grants voted into an Appropriation Bill, without which no money may leave the Consolidated Fund. Article 116 allows a vote on account to keep government running until that process finishes. The cut motion is the instrument through which the middle power in Article 113(2) — the power to reduce — is actually exercised on the floor.

The word 'cut' is the whole clue: whatever else a cut motion does, it must involve cutting a number. Scan the four options for that idea and only one contains it — option (b) speaks of a proposal to reduce expenditure. Options (c) and (d) both use 'restrict', which sounds similar but names no reduction, no demand and no mover, and option (a) shifts the target from the budget's proposals to the government's running spending. The second discriminator is constitutional and rules out (d) outright: charged expenditure is not votable at all under Article 113(1), so no motion of any kind lies against that part of the Consolidated Fund. It is also worth carrying the House rule into the exam hall — demands for grants are submitted to the House of the People, so cut motions exist only in the Lok Sabha. A cut motion carried against a government is by convention treated as a defeat on a financial matter, which is why they are moved constantly and almost never adopted.

• Article 113(2), verbatim: the House of the People 'shall have power to assent, or to refuse to assent, to any demand, or to assent to any demand subject to a reduction of the amount specified therein' — the clause the cut motion rests on.
• The three forms: Policy Cut, 'that the amount of the demand be reduced to Re 1', signifying disapproval of the underlying policy; Economy Cut, reduced by a specified sum, representing an economy that can be effected; Token Cut, reduced by ₹100, to air one specific grievance.
• Cut motions exist only in the Lok Sabha. Under Article 113(2) demands for grants go to the House of the People alone; the Rajya Sabha may discuss the Annual Financial Statement but cannot vote on the demands, and UPSC keyed exactly this point in 2015.
• Article 113(1) puts charged expenditure beyond any cut motion: it 'shall not be submitted to the vote of Parliament'. Article 112(3) lists it — the President's emoluments; the salaries of the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, and the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Council of States; debt charges; Supreme Court judges' salaries and pensions; the Comptroller and Auditor-General's salary and pension; and any sums needed to satisfy a judgment, decree or award of a court or arbitral tribunal.
• On the last day allotted for demands, the Speaker applies the 'guillotine' and puts all outstanding demands to the vote together, discussed or not — so most demands are never debated in detail and most cut motions are never reached.
• Article 116 lets the Lok Sabha make a grant in advance — the vote on account — for part of a financial year while the Article 113 and 114 procedure is still being completed.

• Assuming the Rajya Sabha can move a cut motion. Demands for grants are submitted only to the House of the People under Article 113(2); the Upper House may discuss the Budget but never votes the demands.
• Aiming a cut motion at charged expenditure — judges' salaries, debt charges, the CAG. Article 113(1) keeps that half of the estimates off the vote entirely.
• Dismissing the Token Cut as trivial because the sum is ₹100. The amount is symbolic; the purpose is to compel a debate on one named grievance.

BPSC asks this head-on and rewards the precise textbook phrase over the plausible paraphrase — which is exactly what separates option (b) from option (c) here — and it likes pinning parliamentary procedures to their Article number, as it also did in this same paper with the office-of-profit bar. UPSC prefers to come at the same knowledge sideways: it asks what the Rajya Sabha cannot do, or gives a list of methods of parliamentary control over public finance and asks how many of them are real.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A cut motion which seeks that the amount of a demand be reduced to Re 1 is known as

  • (a)Token Cut
  • (b)Economy Cut
  • (c)Policy Cut
  • (d)Guillotine

  Answer(c) Policy Cut — reducing a demand to a token Re 1 signifies disapproval of the policy underlying that demand. A Token Cut reduces it by ₹100 to raise a grievance, and the guillotine is the Speaker's device for putting undiscussed demands to the vote.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which Article of the Constitution are the votable estimates submitted to the Lok Sabha in the form of demands for grants ?

  • (a)Article 110
  • (b)Article 112
  • (c)Article 113
  • (d)Article 114

  Answer(c) Article 113 — clause (2) requires the non-charged estimates to go as demands for grants to the House of the People. Article 112 is the Annual Financial Statement, Article 114 the Appropriation Bill and Article 110 the definition of a Money Bill.