Mr. President, I have great pleasure in supporting Clause 19 as it is. At the same time I feel somewhat inclined favourably to the picture that has been depicted by members from Assam where the problem of the hilliness, inaccessibility, sparseness of population and all similar physical difficulties have been pointed out. I am quite definite the amendment that has been moved to the effect that, instead of one lakh, two lakhs of people should send a representative should not be accepted by this Assembly. If anything, we should go in the other direction and make representation as broad-based as possible and reduce the figure one lakh to something less. I do not say it should be 35,000, or 10,000 or 50,000. I think we have to look to the practicability in the present set up. If we are going to be democratic at all, we should be as representative, make representation as broad-based as possible and we shall not be doing that by increasing the figure higher than one lakh. We have been given a good picture of the difficult and mountainous character of the Province of Assam. That is true, that is a feature which is characteristic of most of the Adibasi tracts throughout India. I come from the Chota Nagpur Plateau, Jharkhand, which is equally mountainous, equally inaccessible as some of the territories that have been described by my friend Mr. Gopinath Bardoloi from Assam. Unless the delimitation of the constituencies is done on a much smaller population basis, it will simply mean that elections will have no strong appeal to the people. It would be difficult for the people whose votes we want and whose opinions we seek, to be interested. Sir Muhammad Saadullah, in his amendment, pointed out that he did not want that any House should be toounweildy. He gave us a figure which he wanted not to be exceeded. That is all very well but Mr. President, I have been reading, I have been hearing a great deal from the agents of the Indian National ‘Congress, expressions about a re-distribution, a re-alignment of provinces on a cultural and linguistic basis. There is the famous Karachi Minority Resolution, 16 years old and, recently, we have had vociferous demands from various areas such as Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Mahakoshal, Mithila and Jharkhand. I do not know whether I have left out any but there are these areas which have been demanding that there should be a re-alignment of the present unweildy and unnatural provinces. Well, I do hope that there will be a re-alignment, that, the Indian National Congress will honour its word, honour the Karachi Minority Resolution and set about it quickly to get this dream realized. In that case, I think, arithmetically, Sir Muhammad Saadulla’s fears will disappear altogether. Then on the basis of one per lakh the representation will never exceed the figure he has mentioned.
