With regard to the first question, the position is this. In the United States, as my honourable Friend, Shri Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar said, there has been a question as to whether the territorial waters belong to the United States Government or whether they belong to several States, because you know under the American Constitution, the Central Government gets only such powers as have been expressly given to them. Therefore, in the United States it is a moot question as yet, I think, whether the territorial waters belong to the States or they belong to the Centre. We thought that this is such an important matter that we ought not to leave it either to speculation or to future litigation or to future claims, that we ought right now to settle this question, and therefore this article is introduced. Ordinarily it is always understood that the territorial limits of a State are not confined to the actual physical territory but extent beyond that for three miles in the sea. That is a general proposition which has been accepted by international law. Now the fear is-I do not want to hide this fact-that if certain maritime States such as, for instance, Cochin, Travancore or Cutch came into the Indian Union, unless there was a specific provision in the Constitution such as the one we are trying to introduce, it would be still open to them to say : “Our accession gives jurisdiction to the Central Government over the physical territory of the original States; but our territory which includes territorial waters is free from the jurisdiction not only on the physical territory, but also on the territorial waters, which according to the International Law and according to our original status before accession belong to us.” We therefore want to state expressly in the Constitution that when any Maritime States join the Indian Union, the territorial waters of that Maritime State will go to the Central Government. That kind of question shall never be subject to any kind of dispute or adjudication. That is the reason why we want to make this provision in article 271-A.
