Mr. President, I shall confine my remarks firstly to the motion moved by my Friend Professor Laskar. I feel deeply sympathetic to his case, but then we are faced with a difficult situation. If you take the figures of population of Assam his case will not stand scrutiny. First, we find that we have there 34 lakhs of tribal population and 17 lakhs of Muslims, leaving the general population in a sort of minority. According to the 1941 census the total population of Assam (Divided) was about 74 lakhs. As such, it is very difficult to give representation in the House of the People on the basis of population which is only 31/4 lakhs of Scheduled Castes. There are other communities in Assam such as Ahoms. They are three lakhs odd. The Ahoms were the ruling community and therefore they will have as much right to claim a seat. Then we have Mataks and Morans who are also 31/2 lakhs, Chutias about 11/4 lakhs, seats for them also to be created and carved out of the general community which, as I have said, is a minority. I feel that Mr. Laskar’s community deserves our sympathy and I hope Mr. Laskar will have a seat in the House. But our position is such that it is impossible for us to concede his point. We have grown a convention in our part of the country to see that as far as possible all communities are represented. The Congress Committee has observed this for a very long time and they will make sure that in spite of the fact that the number of his community is small, there is a chance in the next five years for him to come into the House of the People.
