With his election to the Chairmanship, the Constituent Assembly may be said to have really started on its fateful career. Before it accomplishes its full task, It is bound to be confronted by situations and difficulties which will try the capacity even of so uniquely equipped a person as Dr. Rajendra Prasad. He will no doubt, and we have every confidence that he will, conquer them all. He will of course maintain the dignity and prestige of this Assembly and the privileges of its members–that goes without saying. But the most onerous of his tasks will be to defeat all attempts, direct or indirect, at weakening or whittling down the sovereign Powers of this Assembly. This is not the occasion for me to develop in any elaboration the proposition that, for the task which this Assembly has taken upon itself, it is sovereign in every sense of the word. That its members have been brought together by a machinery employed by the present Government of India does not detract from that sovereignty. (Hear, hear). The task of the Assembly is, in the not very elegant word that the Cabinet Mission has employed in its Statement, the ‘settling’ of the constitution for all India-all India, including not merely the Union but the units and, if this Assembly and its Sections should so decide, the Groups, if any, are to be formed at all.
