Sir, at the time this Resolution was adopted, what we were attempting to do was to implement the scheme in the Cabinet Mission Plan. That Plan, as the House will remember, provided for a federation of Provinces and States and the assignment of a certain limited number of subjects, broadly described, to the Federation and for various other details as regards both the substance and the procedure which the leaders of the two great parties in the country had already accepted. Now, one of the important matters that had to be tackled by this House in connection with that plan was the scope of the subjects that were assigned to the Centre in that Plan. Those subjects were very broadly described, as I said. They consisted of Defence External Affairs and Communications, and the finance necessary for these subjects. Well, one of the items in that Plan which had been accepted was that constitutions had to be framed both for the Provinces and the Centre, the Federation, as also for any Groups, if the decision of the House was in favour of setting up such Groups. The constitutions for the provinces Groups were proposed to be made in the Sections into which this Assembly was to be divided after its preliminary meeting. Before the work of framing those constitutions was taken up it was considered necessary that some indication should be given as to the orbit,–if I may use the word–of the jurisdiction of the Centre, that is to say, the subjects which would be within the sphere of the Federation, so that the remaining subjects might be catered for in the Constitutions of the Provinces or of the Provinces and Groups, if Groups came to be decided on. It was for the purpose of implementing this object that it was decided that we should first undertake an investigation of the individual subjects which would fall within these four broad categories, and for that purpose we appointed a Committee to make this investigation and submit a report to the House. That Committee met, and on the 17th of April, I think, it made a report. That Report was presented to the House by me on the 28th April. In presenting it, I said I was not placing before the House any motion for the consideration of the Report because the conditions at that time were so fluid that we would only have wasted a considerable amount of the time of this House in considering that Report which was bound to become out-of-date within a few weeks. As a matter of fact, a very fateful political decision was impending at that time and we did not know what the nature of that decision was going to be, whether India was going to remain united or whether it was going to be divided and if so, what other details would have to be filled in. In those circumstances, I suggested that the House need not consider that first Report of this Committee at that time. I also pointed out that it would be necessary for the Committee to meet again and review the recommendations it had embodied in its first report in the light of political decisions that might be taken very soon after. As the House is aware, that decision was taken an the 3rd June and that decision started being implemented from almost that date; since then we have had the Indian Independence Act enacted by Parliament. Well, Sir, that Act has given us two Dominions in what was India, before the 15th of August.
