Mr. President, Sir, I have a short time at my disposal to deal with this enormous subject and I shall therefore confine myself to one or two specific subjects and reserve my comments on other matters for a latter stage. The first thing to which I wish to draw the attention of the House is the treatment of the expression “States”. “States” under the Draft Constitution means almost anything. The idea was to do away with the distinction between the Provinces, the Indian States, the Chief Commissioners’ Provinces and similar other things. It was feared, and very naturally feared, at one stage that the Indian States would not align themselves or could not be made to align themselves to the new set up of things, but things have proceeded rapidly and the “States” have quite reasonably aligned themselves or are aligning themselves with the Provinces. I therefore think that this definition of “States” as meaning all sorts of things is no longer necessary. I should think we should revert to the nomenclature of Provinces, Indian States and Chief Commissioners’ Provinces and the like. There is no fear of jumbling them together and it is better to treat them as distinct entities. It may have been thought by the eminent draftsmen that unless they did this, there would be some centrifugal forces working, making them drift apart. But, that fear having been allayed, it is now necessary to go back to the original state of affairs. I submit that we are not legislating for the future; we are legislating for the present; though we should have an eye for the future, we must not forget that we are legislating for the present time. In the Draft Constitution we have three distinct items, namely, Provinces, Indian States and Chief Commissioners’ Provinces. We should not do away with the present distinctions. If at a future date, these distinct entities would combine into one, as I have no doubt they will, and would be governed by the same or similar characteristics, then will be the time to amend the Constitution and treat them on the same basis.
