Posted inPOLITY Salient features of the Constitution

Constituent Assembly, Its Criticism

Constituent Assembly, Its Criticism

The main objective of the Constituent Assembly was to prepare a draft for the Constitution of the country on the recommendation of the Cabinet Mission which visited India in 1946.

Table of Contents

Historical Background
Objective
Provisions
Criticism
Conclusion

Constituent Assembly of India – Historical Background

  • In 1934, M N Roy proposed the idea of a constituent assembly.
  • The demand was taken up by the Congress Party in 1935 as an official demand.
  • The British accepted this in the August Offer of 1940.
  • Elections were held for the formation of the constituent assembly under the Cabinet Mission plan of 1946.
  • The members of this assembly were elected indirectly, i.e., by the members of the provincial assemblies using the method of a single transferable vote of prop.

Objective

  • The princely states’ representatives were to be chosen by the princely states’ heads.
  • The Constituent Assembly’s goal was to draft an acceptable Constitution as the only way for India’s self-determination principle to be implemented.
  • To draft a constitution that will allow for the appropriate transfer of sovereign power from British to Indian hands.

Provisions

Constituent Assembly – Provisions

  • Section 8 of the Indian Independence Act of 1947 established the Assembly.
  • The Constituent Assembly of India was established in accordance with the provisions of the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 1946.
  • The Assembly was made up of 389 members who represented provinces (292), states (93),Chief Commissioner Provinces (3), as well as Balochistan (1)
  • On December 9, 1946, the Assembly convened for the first time and elected Dr. Sachhidannand Sinha, the Assembly’s oldest member, as Provisional President.
  • Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected as the Assembly’s permanent Chairman on December 11, 1946.
  • The Assembly was to be composed of proportional representation from existing provincial legislatures and princely states.
  • The Assembly was to be divided into three sections: Punjab &the North-West, Bengal-Assam, and the rest of India.
  • The constitutions were to be drafted for the Indian Union, each Section, and each of the Provinces within them.
  • The Muslim League, which had won the majority of the 80 Muslim seats and dominated two smaller Sections, chose not to participate, and as a result, the Assembly never convened separatelyin sections.
  • Following the passage of the Indian Independence Act by the British Parliament, it was decided that members who wanted to keep their seats in the provincial legislature would vacate their seats in the Assembly.
  • However, several members of the provincial legislature continued to attend and participate in the Assembly until a provision was made in the Constitution itself prohibiting this.
  • The declaration of Partition of India caused the greatest change in membership.
  • Following an initial lack of interest, the princely states began negotiating their representation with a committee of the Assembly.
  • Hundreds of princely states were grouped into larger associations over time, and provisions were made for them to elect their representatives to the Assembly.
  • New members continued to join up until the Assembly’s final day. Until the very end, Hyderabad did not send a representative.
  • According to records, the Assembly’s maximum membership near the end of its tenure was 307.
  • Several non-members assisted the Assembly in developing the Constitution.
  • Outside the Assembly, prominent public figures were asked to serve on committees formed by the Assembly to focus on specific features or segments.
  • These committees were responsible for much of the constitution’s development, both procedurally and substantively.
  • Resolutions were moved and adopted after discussionsto establish committees as needed.
  • The Constituent Assembly established 13 committees to draftthe constitution.
  • A seven-member committee prepared a draftof the constitution based on the reports of these committees.
  • The draftconstitution was published in January 1948, and the public had eight months to discuss it and propose amendments.
  • Following the receipt of comments in response to the Draft Constitution of February 1948, the so-called Special Committee was formed to determine the next course of action.
  • After the draftwas discussed by the people, the press, the provincial assemblies, and the constituent Assembly in light of the suggestions received, it was finally adopted and signed by the President of the Assembly on November 26, 1949.
  • Following the authentication of the Constitution’s copies, the Constituent Assembly was naturally dissolved, with its Chairperson elected President of India and its staff diverted to other avenues.
  • However, the majority of the Assembly continued to function as the provisional Parliament of India until the first general elections were held.
  • This provisional Parliament did, in fact, make the first amendment to the Indian Constitution in the summer of 1951.

Criticisim

Constituent Assembly – Criticism

The critics have criticized the Constituent Assembly on various grounds.

  • It was deemed not as a representative body because the members were not directly elected by the people of India on the basis of universal adult franchise.
  • Constituent Assembly was not a Sovereign Body because it was created in the proposal of the British government, also the session was held with the permission of the British Government
  • The Constituent Assembly took a long time to make the Constitution in comparison to other nations like the American constitution took only four months to prepare its constitution.
  • The Constituent Assembly saw the huge dominance by Congress. Granville Austin, a British Constitutional expert, remarked: ‘The Constituent Assembly was a one-party body in an essentially one-party country. The Assembly was the Congress and the Congress was India’.
  • The Constituent Assembly was alleged to be a Hindu-dominated body. Winston Churchill commented that the Constituent Assembly represented ‘only one major community in India’.
  • All the sections of the society sufficiently represented in the Constituent Assembly, were not. It was majorly dominated by lawyers and politicians.

Conclusion

Conclusion

The foregoing criticisms, however, do not reflect the genuine nature of the constituent assembly. Despite the fact that it was indirectly elected, the constituent assembly was made up of people from all walks of life in India. Given the difficulty of enacting a constitution for a country like India, the lengthy procedure was reasonable. The constitution’s secular clauses, as well as the constitution’s long-term viability, demonstrate that the constitution did not offer any overt or covert favour to the main religion of the state.