Constituent Assembly of India Debates

therefore submit that the proper course for us to take is for the President to appoint a
small committee which can report to us in two or three days time as to what rules we
should have for this interim period. There is an obvious difficulty in our functioning as
the Legislative Assembly as we are. For instance, questions may be asked and
members of Government in charge of those portfolios will have to answer. Well Sir,
you are yourself a Member of Government and if a question is asked in regard to the
Department of Food or Agriculture, is the President supposed to reply or who is supposed
to reply.
A difficulty arises. A number of Ministers are not members of this House. They
may, I think, even under the existing rules attend the House and speak without
voting, but all these things will have to be gone into and clarified before we can really
function as a Legislative Assembly. There is no doubt that we can make any rules we
like. We can ask the Ministers to come and function as members of the House if we so
choose. Therefore I beg to suggest that the President do appoint a Committee to
report to us, say, within 3 days as to how we should function during this intervening
period. We are meeting now obviously as the Constituent Assembly, though we can
meet otherwise also. It is clear that if this Constituent Assembly as such had no work
to do, supposing we had finished our preliminary work of laying down the principles of
the Union Constitution a fortnight or three weeks ago, we would not be meeting today.
We would have met on the 14th night and 15th morning for that particular purpose
and adjourned till September or October for the next session of the Constituent
Assembly. We are meeting, therefore, because we had not finished our work a
fortnight ago and we want to complete it in the next week or whatever time it many
take, so that the real detailed Constitution may complete and then we may meet
sometime in October, possibly, finally to pass that Constitution; so that at the present
moment rather casually treating this as a Legislative Assembly will lead us into all
manner of' difficulties, but if the House so chooses i.e., in regard to information being
supplied by Members of Government or anything else, naturally the Members of
Government will be happy to supply it. The point is that everything should be done in
a methodical way. So I submit, Sir, that the best course would be for you to appoint a
Committee to report in two or three days as to what procedure we should follow and if
necessary we can change our rules to that end.
Now, in regard to the questions put by some of the members, some of them I
could not follow at all. Seth Govind Das said something and except for the fact that he
said something about Jubbulpore, I did not at all follow what happened in Jubbulpore,
I tried to follow him, but I am sorry, due probably to my own hearing I could not. So
also another Member whom I could not easily follow. But briefly, I would say this, that
obviously the Government in common with the House attaches the very greatest
importance to the fact that the national flag should be honoured and that any
dishonour to the flag anywhere must be enquired into and necessary steps taken. Two
or three instances that were brought to notice regarding something that happened at
Agra Fort are being enquired into. I believe the U. P. Government .......
Shri Balkrishna Sharma: May I know if the Hon'ble the Leader of the House
received my telegrams about these very incidents?
The Honourable Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru: I cannot say off-hand, because I
have received 7,000 telegrams in the last four or five days and it is a little difficult
immediately to say whether I received the particular telegrams. It is physically
impossible for an individual or for a group of individuals to analyse them or even to