Sir, I do not propose to make any very long statement on the report or on the recommendations made by the Drafting Committee for the purpose of revising or altering the articles as they were passed at the last session of this Assembly. The only thing that I wish to say is that I would not like to apologise to the House for the long list of corrigenda which has been placed before the House or the supplementary list of amendments included in List II. In my judgment it would have been much better if the Drafting Committee had been able to avoid this long list of corrigenda and the supplementary list of amendments contained in List II, but the House will realise the Stress Of time under which the Drafting Committee had been working. It is within the knowledge of all the Members of the House that the last session of the Constituent Assembly ended on the 17th of October. Today is the 14th of November. Obviously, there was not even one full month available for the Drafting Committee to carry out this huge task of examining not less than 395 articles which are now part of the Constitution. As I said, the Drafting Committee had not even one month, but that even is not a correct statement, because according to Rule 38-R and other rules, the Drafting Committee was required to circulate the Draft. Constitution as revised by them five days before this session of the House. As a matter of fact the Constitution was circulated on the 6th of November, practically eight days before the commencement of this session. Consequently the time available for the Drafting Committee was shorter by eight days. Again, must be taken into consideration that in order to enable the Drafting Committee to send out the Draft Constitution in time, they had to hand over the draft they had prepared to the printer some days in advance to be able to obtain the copies some time before they were actually despatched. The draft was handed over to the printer on the 4th of November. It will be seen that the printer had only one day practically to carry out the alterations and the amendments suggested by the Drafting Committee. It is impossible either for the printer or for the Drafting Committee or the gentleman in charge of proof corrections to produce a correct copy of such a huge document containing 395 articles with in one day.
