The next question for consideration is whether 200 or 300 villages and a small city will be able to bear the financial burden of a Lieutenant-Governor. It can be said emphatically that it cannot do so. The administration of this region would not therefore run efficiently. It is clear that the administration of such a small unit would not be able to function efficiently. It is thus plain that such a small unit cannot support its existence. The next solution that naturally occurs to the mind is its merger with a neighbouring province. So far as the United Provinces is concerned, Shri Deshbandhu has referred to the imperialism of the United Provinces and stated that it goes on absorbing territory after territory. I would like to state it plainly that United Provinces has no desire to absorb any territory within itself. If three small States have been merged with it, it is because they could not be merged with any other province. They were three islands in the United Provinces. When the question of Dholpur and Bharatpur arose, the President of our Provincial Congress Committee clearly stated that they should join Rajasthan. So the United Provinces can only consider such a case when there is no other solution. When no other Doctor can provide a cure, the United Provinces has to come to the rescue. The United Provinces is not prepared to consider the case prior to that. So you must leave aside the question of the United Provinces. It will be better if Shri Deshbandhu keeps apart the issue of Imperialism. Our Province does not want to impose any imperialism. The question we have at present to consider relates only to the part left after the separation of New Delhi. The other Province with which it can be merged is the Punjab. Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava has advanced so many historical and sentimental arguments to prove that from the historical and psychological point of view Delhi should be merged in Hariyana of the East Punjab. But my arguments are somewhat different from his. I put this to you, have we or have we not to rehabilitate the East Punjab which has suffered most and which has not yet been rehabilitated so far in the last two years. It is your frontier province. We have to strengthen it. If that remains weak, our whole country will be weak. What is needed to rehabilitate her? First of all you give her a capital, give her a place where her Government can be established, which can become the seat of her Government. Today the condition is such that Simla is the Capital of the Government of the Punjab, the ministers live in Jullundur, the University is at Ambala and the College is at Ludhiana. How long will such conditions continue in the Punjab? If you want to rehabilitate the Punjab, her first need is a Capital; if you cannot provide her with a capital, you cannot rehabilitate her, and that will mean more delay and delay will mean that the whole Union will continue to have weak defences. Hence the first requirement is that the East Punjab should have a Capital, where her ministers can live, where it may have its own administration where it may have a university, where there may be a centre of all her institutions. Formerly that centre was in Lahore and that has been cut off from her. Now there is no developed city in the Punjab, where they could build another Capital. If such a thing had happened in the United Provinces, it would have been a different thing, for the political life of the U. P. is not centred in one city. There is Kanpur along with Lucknow, and Benaras along with Allahabad. If one city is cut off from her she can transfer her capital to the other. But this was not the case with the Punjab. There the whole of the political life was centred at Lahore. So Punjab has been a sufferer due to the cutting off of Lahore. So I propose that excluding New Delhi, the Delhi and the Civil Lines and all the villages should be merged with the East Punjab and the other proposal is that Punjab’s Capital should shift to Delhi. I am suggesting this, for perhaps Shri Deshbandhu may like to merge the East Punjab in Delhi. You may merge the East Punjab in Delhi, and its capital should be located in the Civil Lines of Delhi, where the old Secretariat, the old Governor General’s Lodge are situated, and you can provide a number of buildings there for the purpose. If Delhi becomes the capital, I think the rehabilitation of the East Punjab would have begun.]*
