Hon’ble Members, the last speaker has practically closed me for all time together by declaring that she as a woman must have the last word, and many of you who are lawyers here know that there can be no last word after the last word. I shall therefore not detain you long. If I choose to do so, I could hold your attention till the small hours of the next morning, for of all the people present here in this great gathering I am the one who has had the privilege, the great privilege, the greatest privilege, of knowing intimately Dr. Rajendra Prasad for a period of now 44 long years; since he passed his matriculation in the year 1902, and stood first in the first division in the whole of the Calcutta University of those days, extending from Assam to the Punjab and the North-West Frontier. I remember that when he passed the matriculation examination standing first in the Calcutta University, I wrote an editional note in the Hindustan Review (which I was then conducting, and which I am still conducting after 47 years), to the effect that to a man with the brilliant powers of Rajendra Prasad nothing could be denied. I said, we may predict that he will one day be the President of the Indian National Congress, and while delivering the presidential address, like Sir Narayan Chandavarkar at the previous year’s session of the Congress, held at Lahore, will receive a communication from the Viceroy of India offering him a High Court Judgeship. That was what I predicted about him then He has lived to be the President of the Indian National Congress more than once. But he has profoundly disappointed me by not being a High Court Judge, Why was I so anxious that he should be a High Court Judge? Because he would have handled properly the British bureaucracy on the executive side, with his independence of judgment and trenchant criticism of their conduct. But if Dr. Rajendra Prasad has not been a High Court Judge, he has lived to be elected the permanent Chairman of the Constituent Assembly of India. And to day it is my proud privilege now-the highest privilege I hoped to have achieved in my life-of inducting him into the Chair (which I have so unworthily occupied for the last few days) as the first permanent Chairman of this Constituent Assembly. (Applause) I now vacate this Chair, and I shall ask Dr. Rajendra Prasad, in the name of this great gathering to come and occupy this Chair which he so worthily deserves.
