There is no constitutional illegality in Parliament having amended the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) Act of 1956 by way of a ‘Money Bill’ for floating an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and parting with its shareholding in the corporation to raise ₹65,000 crore to ₹70,000 crore initially to the Consolidated Fund of India, the Madras High Court has ruled.
The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy held that a challenge to the Finance Act of 2021, through which the LIC Act was amended, could not be accepted in the absence of a challenge to a certificate issued by the Lok Sabha Speaker classifying the Finance Bill 2021 as a Money Bill.
The judges said, the Speaker’s decision should be treated as final as per Article 110(3) of the Constitution, unless a judicial review of it had been prayed for. They dismissed a writ petition filed by an insurance policyholder L. Ponnammal who had contended that the subject matter would not fall within the definition of Money Bill.
