The House will remember that this Committee was appointed for a specific purpose–for fixing the distribution of seats of the Assembly not exceeding 93, and for fixing the method by which the representatives of the States should be returned to the Assembly. These were the definite directions given to us and we proceeded accordingly, but when we met the negotiating Committee appointed by the Chamber of Princes, other questions were raised. We were confronted by various Resolutions passed by organizations of the Princes. We informed them that we had no authority to deal with any other matter. Our authority was limited to dealing with these two specific matters. Indeed we went a little further. We said we rather doubted the authority even of the Constituent Assembly to deal with all manner of other matters, that is to say, the Constituent Assembly as it is constituted at present. But in any event we were so anxious to get going, so anxious to remove any misapprehensions that might exist, that some of us had further conversations with them and some doubts that they raised were removed in the course of those conversations; some questions that were asked were answered informally, personally if you likes on our behalf because it was not open to us to go beyond the terms of the mandate that you gave us. You will see a reference to that in the Report that is presented to you, in particular because–I am bound to make this point perfectly clear–a few important points were raised by them in the course of those discussions. As it happened, what I said in reply to those questions had more or less been said by me in this House before or by other Members of this House, and therefore, I had no difficulty in saying it to them because otherwise I would have had this great difficulty of saying anything which the House might not approve, or might disapprove as wrong. All of us have certain views in this matter and on one of the occasions when I addressed this House in connection with the Objectives Resolution, I referred also to the States and to the Princes and made it clear that while I, in my individual capacity, held certain views, those views did not come in the way of my stating what the Constituent Assembly stood for, and what its range of activities was going to be. I said then that, while we were deciding in favour of a Republic for the whole of India, that did not bar any State from continuing the monarchical form of Government so far as that State was concerned, provided, of course, that they fitted in the larger picture of freedom and provided, as I hope that there was the same measure of freedom and responsible government in the State. So when these questions were raised. I had no particular difficulty in answering them because in effect they had been mentioned in this House previously.
