CONSTITUENT
ASSEMBLY - POLITY
News:
‘India’ and ‘Bharat’
retained to align varied views in Constituent Assembly
What's
in the news?
● Constituent
Assembly debates show that both ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’ were retained in the
Constitution to align contrasting thoughts voiced by the makers in 1948.
Key
takeaways:
● The
debates ended with the addition of ‘Bharat’ to Article 1(1), which currently
reads ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States’.
Constituent
Assembly:
● The
Constituent Assembly was an assembly of elected
representatives who drafted the document of the constitution.
● The
idea of a constituent assembly was put forward for the first time by MN Roy.
● In 1935, the Indian National Congress
(INC), for the first time, officially called for a
constituent assembly to frame a constitution for India.
● In
1938, Jawaharlal Nehru made this
emphatic statement regarding the constitution- ‘The constitution of free India
must be framed, without outside interference, by a constituent assembly elected
on the basis of adult franchise’.
Constituent
Assembly and British:
● The
demand for a constituent assembly was accepted for the first time by the
British through their ‘August offer’ of
1940.
● Eventually,
a constituent assembly was established under the provisions of the Cabinet Mission plan.
Elections
and Members:
● Elections
to this Assembly were held in July 1946,
and its first meeting was held in December 1946.
● Due
to partition, the constituent assembly was also divided.
● It
comprised 299 members that adopted the constitution on 26 November 1947, which
came into effect on 26 January 1950.
● The
constituent assembly had the responsibility
for framing the constitution of India.
● It
functioned from December 1946 to November 1949.
Composition
of the Council:
● Total
strength of the assembly: 389
● 296
seats for British India and 93 seats to princely states.
● 292
seats allocated for British India were to be from eleven governor’s provinces
and four from Chief commissioner’s provinces
● Seats
were allocated based on proportion to their respective population.
● Seats
allocated to each British province were to be decided among the three principal
communities- Muslims, Sikhs and general.
● Representatives
of each community were to be elected by members of that community in the
provincial legislative assembly and voting was to be by the method of proportional representation by means of
single transferable vote.
● In
1946 elections were held in 296 seats for the Constituent Assembly.
○ 208
- Congress
○ 73
- Muslim League
○ 15
- Other
● The
highest number of seats came from the United
Provinces.
○ United
Provinces - 55
○ Madras
- 49
○ Bihar
- 36
● Junagarh,
Jammu & Kashmir and Hyderabad did not participate in the Constituent Assembly
elections.
Committees
of Constituent Assembly:
● There
were 8 Major committees and 15 minor
committees in the constituent assembly for different subjects.
● It
conducted 11 sessions to discuss
different issues related to the formation of the constitution.