constituent assembly of india debates (proceedings)- volume vii

should be elected and that House should deal with the question of framing the Constitution. I do not
know if the House will be prepared to throw away all that we have been doing during the last two years,
particularly because there is in the Draft an article which gives a somewhat easy method of amending
the Constitution during the early years after it comes into force and if there is any lacuna or if there is
anything which needs amendment, that could easily be done under the provision to which I have just
made reference, and it is, therefore, not necessary that we should hold up the consideration of the entire
Constitution until we have adult franchise. The difficulty will be in the first place to form the electorate
under adult franchise; we have no such law existing at present. Adult franchise we have contemplated in
this Draft Constitution and it will come into force when this Constitution has been passed. So if you want
to have adult franchise and if you want to have another Constituent Assembly for the purpose of drafting
the amendments, we shall have to pass another law and I do not know which House will have the right
to pass that law which will constitute a Constituent Assembly. So I think it would be best to proceed with
the draft which we have prepared after much labour and to which so much care and attention has been
given by the Drafting Committee and by the Members of this House.
This is the programme which I propose to follow and if there is any other suggestion which any
member wishes to make, I shall be glad to consider it. There is only one thing more which I might
mention and that is this. I do not wish to curtail discussion. I want to give to members the fullest
opportunity for considering every article and every aspect of the Constitutional question, because, after
all, it is going to be our Constitution, but at the same time, I do not like that we should spend more time
than is absolutely necessary over it by repeating arguments which have already been once advanced by
one Member or another or by going over the same ground. For that reason, we may not reconsider many
of the decisions which have already been taken. Members know that we had long discussions, and after
long discussions we settled the principles of the Constitution and the Draft, the bulk of it, is based upon
those decisions which were taken after long discussion by this House. I would not expect that the
Members would lightly throw away those decisions and insist upon are consideration of those decisions.
There may be cases where a reconsideration may be necessary. But ordinarily, we shall proceed upon
the decisions which have already once been taken and it is only where no decisions have yet been taken
that the House may have to take decisions for the first time. Now there are certain questions on which
no decisions have been taken. There were certain committees appointed by the House. The reports of
those Committees were not considered. But the Drafting Committee has taken care to place in the draft
alternative proposals, one set of proposals representing their own views where they differ from those of
those Committees and another set of proposals embodying the recommendations and the decisions of
those Committees. So when we come to those particular provisions, the House may consider them on
their merits, and after considering them on their merits may accept either the opinion of the Drafting
Committee or of the Committee. The House will have the draft ready, so that it will not have to wait for
preparing a draft on these questions. When we consider this whole matter from this point of view, I
think, after all, the scope for discussion gets very much limited, because most of the amendments will be
more or less of a drafting nature, because the decisions have already been taken, and so far as the
drafting is concerned, the Drafting Committee has already considered many of these suggestions and
amendments and it has accepted them. So, while there maybe discussion of principle in regard to some
questions which have not been decided, there is not much to discuss so far as principles are concerned,
because we have already discussed those principles and we have arrived at certain conclusions.
Therefore, what I feel is this, that if we proceeded in a business-like way, it should be possible for us to
complete discussion of the whole Constitution by the second anniversary of the day on which we started
the work of this Constituent Assembly, that is, by the 9th of December next.
If we succeed in doing that, after that we might have a few days adjournment, when all the
amendments which have been accepted by the House will be considered by the Drafting Committee and
put in their proper places, when all the re-numbering and re-allocation of the Articles from one Chapter
to another and so forth--all that becomes necessary--all that could be done within that interval of say ten
or fifteen days. Then, we might meet a second time when we could finally accept the Constitution as it
will have emerged. In this second discussion, under the Rules, we shall not go into the merits of any