The liquidation of a large number of Indian States scattered like islands over the length and breadth of this land, their merger with the neighbouring provinces, has been effected under the able leadership of Sardar Patel. In the result the States have been considerably reduced in number and either as individual States or as comprising groups of States they have been brought into the orbit of the Indian Union. Their Constitutions have been brought into line with the Constitutions of States in Part I and they have become units of the Indian Union on the same terms as the States in Part I and they have become units of the Indian Union on the same terms as the States in Part I so that we are in a position to say that all the units of the Union occupy the same position in regard to it excepting for certain specific transitional provisions. The Constitution does not permit the States which have acceded to the Union to secede from it. Their association with the Union is inseparable and they have become an integral part of the Indian Union. There is no going back. The magnitude of this achievement cannot be overestimated when we remember that the existence of a large number of such States has been put forward always as an excuse by the British Imperialists for the withholding of freedom from India. The Act of 1935 far from abolishing this distinction served to perpetuate the distinction.
