Mountbatten Plan

In March 1947, Lord Louis Mountbatten was sent as the new Viceroy to arrange for a smooth transfer of power. He reached India on 22nd March 1947. Very soon he came to the firm conclusion that it would not be possible for the Congress and the Muslim League to work together either in the interim Government or in the Constituent Assembly and the only way, therefore, to prevent the orgy of communal violence from assuming still more fierce dimensions was to transfer power to Indian hands with the greatest expedition. It was already becoming quite obvious and the Congress had also come to realise that partition of the country was inevitable and was left as the only alternative to utter chaos, anarchy and civil war. Accordingly, he fixed the date of 15th August , 1947 for transfer of power. The Congress too was gradually veering round to the inevitability of partition of the country.

Mountbatten prepared a plan for partition and after consultations with the leaders of the opposition parties in Britain, a fresh policy statement embodying the Mountbatten Plan was issued on 3 June 1947. The scheme underlying this statement recognised the inevitability of the partition of the country. According to the statement, the constitution framed by the existing Constituent Assembly could not be forced on unwilling parts. As such, it laid down a procedure for ascertaining the wishes of such areas on whether they wanted a separate constituent assembly. The net result and effect of the whole scheme, it was obvious, was to be the partition of India into India and Pakistan.