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Monday, December 30, 2013

Elections and Cabinet Mission

Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly in India which were overdue were held in the last quarter of 1945. Elections to the Provincial Assemblies were completed by April 1946.  The Congress contested the elections on the issue of the Quit India resolution and the Muslim League on the issue of Pakistan. The result showed that the Congress obtained absolute majority in eight provinces (Assam, Bihar, Bombay, Central Provinces, Madras, N.W.F.P., Orissa and U.P.). In the remaining three provinces, the Congress was the second largest party. The Congress also secured majority of the elected seats (56 out of 102) in the Central Assembly. However, while the record of Congress successes was most impressive in the general constituencies and the party in fact improved its position over the 1937 results, it fared badly in the reserved Muslim constituencies.

When the elections to the Provincial Assemblies were in progress in India, on 19 February, 1945 Lord Pethick Lawrence announced in Parliament that a special Mission of Cabinet Ministers consisting of the Secretary of State, the President of the Board of Trade (Stafford Cripps) and the First Lord of Admiralty (A. V. Alexander) would go to India to act in association with the Viceroy in this matter. The Mission was in India from March 1946 to May 1946.

The Mission rejected the League demand for a separate sovereign State of Pakistan as "impracticable" inasmuch as it would contain a large proportion of non-Muslim population and a sizeable Muslim population would be left outside Pakistan in India.

The Cabinet Mission also rejected the Congress scheme of a loose federation as involving constitutional disadvantages and anomalies. It recommended a three tier structure consisting of the Union of India at the top, groups of Provinces in the middle and provinces and princely states at the bottom.

The Cabinet Mission recommended that the constitution should take the following basic form:

(1) There should be a Union of India, embracing both British India and the States which should deal with the following subjects: Foreign Affairs, Defence and Communications; and should have the powers necessary to raise the finances required for the above subjects.

(2) The Union should have an Executive and a Legislature constituted from British Indian and States' representatives. Any question raising a major communal issue in the Legislature should require for its decision a majority of the representatives present and voting of each of the two major communities as well as a majority of all the members present and voting.

(3) All subjects other than the Union subjects and all residuary powers should vest in the Provinces.

(4) The States will retain all subjects and powers other than those ceded to the Union.

(5) Provinces should be free to form groups with Executives and Legislatures, and each group could determine the Provincial subjects to be taken in common.

(6) The constitutions of the Union and of the groups should contain a provision whereby any Province could by a majority vote of its Legislative Assembly call for a reconsideration of the terms of the Constitution after an initial period of ten years and at ten-yearly intervals thereafter.

In making these suggestions, the Cabinet Mission made it clear that its object was not to set in motion a machinery whereby a constitution could be settled by Indians for Indians. It had become necessary to make this recommendation because the Cabinet Mission was satisfied that not until that was done was there "any hope of getting the two major communities to join in the setting up of the constitution making machinery".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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