I might mention in this connection, as I said earlier, that the constitution must be framed to fit in with the needs of the country. I ask leaders to examine conditions in India. Look at the U. P., the Centre of India, where the only other political party that you have got, viz., the Socialist Party, was supposed to be the strongest. What was the result in the local board and district board elections? They were beaten. In the Parliamentary elections out of twelve seats vacated by them every one of them was lost. Is this the way in which you can maintain parliamentary democracy? In a parliamentary democracy it is necessary that we must have an effective opposition. You can never have an effective opposition if you have single seat constituencies. It is only by means of a system of proportional representation that you can avoid the danger of reducing India to a Fascist State. I make this observation in all humility that for the preservation of democracy in India it is necessary that you must have a system where by an opposition may be allowed to come in. The popularity, the prestige and the name of the Congress are so great that it is impossible for anyone to come in opposition to the Congress and the result of this is, as has been seen many times in England, that the majority of the electors are disfranchised in this way that if there is a three-cornered contest the defeated candidates might together get more than the successful one. Even conceding that there will be no three-cornered contest a large part of the electorate is disfranchised. Even if you have 60 and 40 per cent. voting,40 per cent. have no representation in the country, whereas under the system of proportional representation which is prevailing in most of the new advanced countries of Europe you will have representation in which every shade of opinion will be represented…….
