Mr. Speaker, Sir, I hope this Honourable House would give me the indulgence to make a special plea for the smaller units of the Indian Federation and especially Assam. Assam was the Cindrella of all Indian Provinces till the Simon Reforms came into operation. Then she stepped up a bit and came over in the list of provinces from the bottom to three or four steps upwards, for smaller states than Assam came into existence like Orissa, Sind and North-West Frontier Provinces. But with the present set up and with the result of the referendum in the district of Sylhet of the Province of Assam she has again been relegated to the Cindrella Province of the Indian Federation. Conditions in Assam are not known to most of the Honourable Members of this House. Assam is a land of wide distances and very sparse population. In extent it was very nearly equal to the Province of Bengal as it existed three months ago, but in population it has only one-sixth the population of Bengal. As has been stated earlier by two of my compatriots, we have very primitive and aboriginal people within our areas which were excluded from the Ministerial influence under the scheme of the Simon Reforms. But the then authorities took into consideration the undeveloped state of Assam and of our peoples, and gave us not merely the Provincial Legislative Assembly with a membership of 108 but also, in spite of the opposition of the peoples,an upper Chamber was imposed on them. I am not concerned here with the Upper Chamber for Honourable Members will be glad to know that all the Members from Assam present in the Constituent Assembly have sent a joint letter to the Honourable the President expressing the views of Assam, not merely of the Congress and the Muslim League but the entire population of Assam, that we do not want any Second Chamber in the future constitution. When I say that Assam has 108 members when its population was only 92 lakhs in the 1931 census, I am not disclosing the fact that one third of Assam was unrepresented in this Legislative Assembly. For Assam has three frontier areas, the biggest one is called the Sadiya Frontier, the next one is the Balipara Frontier and the third is the Tirap Frontier. All these were excluded from the Reforms of 1935. One may say that these being Frontier areas they were right to exclude it. But insular districts like the Naga Hills, the North Cachar Hills and the Lushai Hills also were excluded from participating in the Reforms of 1935. My plea before this August Assembly is that you will have to give your careful consideration if you want backward provinces, undeveloped provinces like Assam–I would not mention any others, because they may not think themselves backward–should be treated separately in the future constitution. I therefore have great pleasure in supporting the motion that has been placed before the House by my Honourable friends Sjt. Omeo Kumar Das and Rev. J.J. Nichols-Roy. Rev. Nichols-Roy has placed before the House the fact that a very large area called the North Cachar Hills with an area of 2,000 square miles but with a population of 37,000 wants to get representation in the future constitution of Assam. But he does not say what should be the limit of population which should entitle the area for representation in the Provincial Constitution. My Honourable friend Sjt. Omeo Kumar Das wants that the population basis should be reduced from one lakh to seventy-five thousand. Some speakers who spoke after I moved my own motion have misunderstood me. I do not want that the representation should be reduced. As a matter of fact I now openly make the plea that the smaller provinces should get a weightage as regards the number of people on the Provincial Legislature. What I wanted was just to place before the House my own humble opinion that there should be a maximum number fixed for such representation and I placed it at 300. One Honourable Member, I refer to my friend Mr. Sidhwa from Sind, fell foul of me and said that even in this House which consists of 228 members, we do not feel that this is unwieldy and that every one listens to the speeches with rapt attention. This is as it should be. For, this Constituent Assembly represents the intelligentia, the patriots, those who have sacrificed their all in the service of the country. No wonder, Sir, that we all listen so attentively and with rapt attention when we have men like Mr. Sidhwa who have to be given a place in this Constituent Assembly although under his physical domicile he was not entitled to sit in this House.
