This is transcript of video lectures from the series of [[15 Video Lectures on Indian Constitution]] **Navigate to other lectures in this series:** [[Introduction to Indian Constitution]] | [[Constituent Assembly Debates]] | [[Preamble of Indian Constitution]] | [[Citizenship in India]] | [[Right to Equality]] | [[Reservation Policies and Indian Constitution]] | [[Freedom of Speech & Expression]] | [[Right to Life and Personal Liberty]] | [[Freedom of Religion]] | [[Rights of Minorities]] | [[Directive Principles]] | [[Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles & Fundamental Duties’ Relationship]] | [[Union Executive Powers & Position of President & Prime Minister]] | [[Indian Judiciary]] | [[Constitutional Amendments & the Basic Structure Theory]] Navashkar, welcome to online course on Indian Constitution. Today, we are going to talk about Constituent Assembly debates and the choices which framers of Indian Constitution made about our Constitution. You may recall in the last lecture, we talked about what is a Constitution, why constitutions are made, what constitutions should contain, how constitutions are classified, etc. Now come to this very important subject, but first of all, you should know how constitutions are drafted world over. So one method is that the Constitution will be drafted when there is a break from the past. First there will be direct election of members of the Constituent Assembly. Once the Constitution is drafted, it will be put to vote. This method has not been adopted in India. How was Constitution drafted? How we adopted it, we will discuss today. So let us first of all talk about the evolution of Constitution and modern India. As you know that the East India Company was incorporated in London in 1600, then they came to India as a trading company. And due to the rivalries amongst Indian princes, they were able to get a control of our country. In 1857, we had the first war of independence against the British, against the East India Company and all Indians united under the banner of last Mogul Emperor Bhaadarsha Zafar. Nevertheless, after the war, the British government took the direct control of India and initiated what can be termed the first phase of constitutional reforms. In 1861, Indian Council Act was passed, but no Indian was made its member. 1885 is a mild stone in our constitutional history, because Indian National Congress was founded. And in 1892, Indians were included in the Council, but not in the executive council of Governor General. That brings me to 1909 when we had a first major reform of 20th century, what are called Government of India Act 1909 or Minto Modular Reform. Now in the legislative council, greater representation was given. The membership increased from 16 to 60. Indirect election of prevention, council was started. Now three members were from traders, universities, tea plantation, municipalities and Muslims. Then as we move forward, another major mild stone in our constitutional history was Government of India Act 1919, what is called Montego-Jemford Reform. Now it can be said to be the first significant constitutional document. It gave autonomy to the provinces, but made a classification between provincial and central subjects. The Governor General in Council, as far as Act is concerned, did not clearly mention that Indians will be included. All decisions were to be made by the majority, but Governor General was given the power to overrule or the power of veto. As we move forward, we have to understand that this 1919 Act also talked of two houses by camera legislation. So there was to be a legislative assembly and there will be a council of state. The council of state out of 60 had official members, but the act said official members will not exceed more than 20. So 40 members will be elected in some manner. And then the legislative assembly had 140 members, 100 were to be elected, 40 to be nominated with 26 official members. In terms of powers, substantial powers, including power to modify or repeal laws, enacted by the British Parliament was given. And now this was a significant development because the mother parliament, the parent parliament, British parliament should have had the overriding power, but it was a major reform because an Indian house had the power to modify or repeal laws made by the parliament in London. But the executive control, overriding control of the executive continued even under the government of India Act 1919. Now the act also introduced hierarchy or dual government in provinces. So there was a classification between reserved subjects and transferred subjects. The reserved subjects which were reserved with the governor were revenue, administration of justice and police. The transferred subject had public health, education, local self-government. And the provincial legislature also, the composition differed from state to state. So in Bengal it was to consist of 139 members and 50 members, Assam had 50 members. Then you had a famous Jalianwala, Bagh Masekar because of which these developments, you know, had a major obstruction. Another big milestone in our constitutional evolution is Motilal Nehru Committee. The Britishers has taunted us and said we will not be able to draft our constitution. A committee headed by Motilal Nehru quickly drafted a constitution. This constitution was significant in terms of providing adult suffrage. The constitution will have a right to vote, providing for federalism and providing for rights. Then in 1927 you got the Simon Commission. The report was submitted in 1930. Now the Congress from 1934 onwards specifically included in its official demands, constitution of a constant assembly. So that a constitution for India is drafted by Indians. No one should dictate us what kind of constitution we want to have. And 1935 Government of India Act is the major significant constitutional development because even today, two-third of our constitution is based on Government of India Act. Of course it did not have fundamental rights. Now you had federalism in the Government of India Act 1935. You had governors, provinces and Indian states or what were called princely states. The states were given an option to join federation through instrument of accession. In the context of Article 370, you must have heard of this term instrument of accession. Now this instrument of accession was also there under the Government of India Act 1935. So every princely state had to sign instrument of accession to join this federation. But the precondition for the constitution of federation was consent of half of princely states. Now moving forward and looking more intensely at the Government of India Act, which as I said is a major milestone of our constitutional evolution. One lie, Government of India Act 1919, which had provided the direkiet provinces, the 1935 Act provided direkiet center and made governor general too powerful. Here the legislature was just by courtesy. Again, there was a division because it was a federal constitution, central and provincial subjects. Now Government of India Act was never enforced at the central level. But for provinces, it came into being in 1937. There were residue powers which governor general could give either to the center or to provinces. This was something very, very important and something very unique. As you know, in a federal constitution, generally the powers of the center are listed and residue is given to the states or in the other model, the power of the states are listed and the residue is given to the center. Here it was provided that the governor general could give residue power either to the center or to the provinces. It created powerful center and that's why Government of India Act 1935 in a way envisaged a quasi-federal polity. One of the greatest weakness of Government of India Act 1935 was direkiet center and it did not create in a sincere way responsible government. Of course, it provided for council of state which was a permanent house like future Rajas Abha. The composition was that from Indian provinces 156 members will come from princely states, 100 and 4 members will come. Then it provided for legislative assembly which was like Lok Sabha. It had 125 members from the princely states and 250 members from the provinces elected by the provincial assemblies. In terms of powers, the legislative assembly was more powerful like Lok Sabha and it had all the powers and in terms of financial matters, it had greater powers. As we move forward to post 1935 India in terms of constitutional developments, the congress ministers resigned in 191339. The federation at center was postponed indefinitely. In 1942, you would get the Kips commission which has said that after the World War II, there will be an independent dominion in Commonwealth and there will be an elected body to frame the constitution. So, our long-standing demand of a constant assembly was considered. The members of the constitution body were to be elected by an electoral college formed by the provincial legislatures. This is what eventually happened and our constant assembly members came from the provincial legislatures. The princely states were also to send their representatives to the constant assembly. This also happened when the constant assembly was eventually constituted. After the World War II in 1946, you got the cabinet plan and see the British people voted out Prime Minister Winston Churchill. You were good as a Prime Minister during war, but post war Labour Party came to power and Labour Party was interested in giving independence to India. On May 15, 1946, the proposals of the cabinet plan were made public. It also proposed a federation. The centre was to have defence for an affairs and communications. The residue subjects were given to the provinces. The constituent assembly was to be formed immediately and it was provided that there will be one seat for one million people and subsequently these seats were distributed between major communities. The elections happened in 1946. The national government was formed on September, 1946 under Pandit Jawaharlal Naru with 14 ministers, 6 congress ministers, 5 Muslim League ministers and 3 of minorities. Muslim League after initial reluctance joined in October 1946. And the first meeting of our constant assembly was held on December 9, 1946 under the chairmanship of Sachidan and Sinha, who was nominated as the interim president of newly constituted constituent assembly. However, constant assembly worked. What are the various choices it made? What are the various phases of its working? Let us try to understand. Dr Rajendra Prasad, who was elected as president, 3, BN Rao was appointed as the advisor to the constant assembly. Initially, the plan was to have forever genies, who was also helping Ceylon in the drafting of their constitution and subsequently held Pakistan in the drafting of their constitution. But Gandhiji suggested that we should have an Indian as the advisor to our constant assembly and be a Rao really played a major role in the drafting of our constitution. The constant assembly was to consist of 389 members, 292 members from governors provinces, 4 members from chief commissioners provinces, as many as 93 members were nominated by the princely states. You can see that India at that time had about 600 princely states. The credit of integration of these princely states with India largely goes to Sadar Balabhai Patate. Then if you look at the election results, Congress 1199 of 210 general seats, Muslim League had about 73 out of the 78 Muslim seats, out of 296 members, 207 members took part in the proceedings on December 9, 1946, the first day of the meeting of the constant assembly. Now constant assembly used to work through committees. So several committees were constituted. One of the most important committee was the drafting committee, which was headed by Dr. Bhimram Bhatkar, the Union Powers Committee and Union Constitution Committee were headed by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Provincial Constitution Committee was headed by Sadar Balabhai Patel and Sadar Balabhai Patel also headed the advisory committee on fundamental rights and minority rights. So there were various committees and first in the committee discussion used to take place and then it used to come to the main body and then it used to go to the drafting committee and then used to come back to the main body. So it was a unique experiment and the debates of these constant assembly are available in 12 volumes and the kind of discussions they have are revealing and they demonstrate the strength of Indian democracy. The wisdom of framers of our constitution because it is very difficult for any new democracy to draft this kind of enlightened, visionary, far-sighted constitution. Now if you look at the working of the constant assembly, on December 13, 1946, objective resolution was moved by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and it was passed on January 22, 1947. In the next lecture I will tell you that the predominant view is that the preemble of the constitution is largely based on this objective resolution. On July 22, 1947, our national flag was adopted and then on 15 August 1947, we will get that biggest day of our history. The red letter day of our history when India was declared as an independent nation, finally the constitution was adopted on November 26, 1949. It took two years, 11 months and 18 days for the constant assembly to draft world's land-based constitution. Now if you look at the working of the constant assembly, you can see that the three phases were there. From December 11, 1946 to August 14, 1947, we are not yet independent. So the constant assembly was just doing the job of drafting the constitution. That is to say it was working merely as a constituent assembly. On August 15, 1947, we got independence. So constant assembly now was working not only as the constituent assembly but also as the visual parliament of independent India. So it was doing a dual job. It was drafting the constitution and simultaneously performing the functions of interim parliament. Now the constitution drafting came to an end on 26 November, 1949 when the constitution of India was adopted. So from 27 November, 1949 till 1952 when we had our first lobes of our elections, constant assembly was working as visual parliament of independent India and it also passed amendments. So this same constituent assembly acting as parliament till 1952 made certain amendments. The first amendment was a major amendment by which the 9th schedule was added to the constitution. Now if you look at the choices which our framers made in terms of the constitution which we have today, Sri Bheon Rao, constituent assembly advisor had collected all the constitutions and all the best provisions of those constitutions had been incorporated in the Indian constitution. These thesis is not entirely true as we did make innovation after the first world war. Seventeen democracies were set up but subsequently only few survived as democratic states. Several democratic countries turned authoritarian. Particularly Portugal, Poland, Japan, Germany, they all reverted to authoritarianism. We adopted parliamentary democracy rather than the American system of presidential form of government because we wanted continuity for last 200 years. Being a British colony, we were used to parliamentary procedures and we did not want to create this kind of a system where personal charisma of one person will decide who rules the country. We made another major choice in my opinion in terms of giving universal adult suffrage in spite of literacy in our country. In my opinion it was a bold and courageous choice that every Indian will have a right to vote. Dr. Bhimra Ambedkar rightly said, French eyes is right not a privilege. Unlike government of India, we did not say that only those who have land will have right to vote. Only those who are educated will have right to vote. Only those who pay income tax will have right to vote. We made it a right of each and every Indian rather than the privilege of elite. And this was a major choice. Similarly, we said we will have a single citizenship. As opposed to unitary system, we adopted federalism. No country adopts federalism out of its own choice, free choice because unitary government is better. We knew that we are a big country. We have several regional aspirations and therefore we opted for federalism rather than a unitary state even though great button is a unitary state. Similarly, we adopted fundamental rights from United States of America but unlike United States of America which does not include in the constitution the restrictions which can be imposed on the fundamental rights. We preferred to write those restrictions in the text of the constitution. That's why we are saying it was not a blind borrowing. We borrowed from United States of America several things but we did not borrow due process of law. When we were drafting our article 21, we said we will have procedure established by law rather than due process of law. It is a different story that subsequently in Manaka Gandhi and several other cases Supreme Court virtually brought in due process of law. We also borrowed from Ireland directive principles of state policy which are the positive obligations of the state. The constitution was written both in English as well as Hindi. Each member signed both the copies as far as the English copies concerned. The constitution of India on its adoption had one leg 17,369 words. Now it is the lendiest constitution of the world. It had 22 parts with 395 articles and 8 schedules. And remember our original constitution was not tied. It was handwritten by Sri Prem Narayan Raizada. And each page of the constitution was decorated by artists from Shantiniketan, such as Ram Manoharsina and Nandlal Bose. These decorations they depict our cultural history. So there is a mention of Mahabharat, there is a mention of Lord Ram, there is a mention of Emperor Akbar. Now what did we learn today? We learned the evolution of our constitution post 1857. How the Constituent Assembly was constituted, how it worked, what choices it made and why it made those choices. In the next lecture we are going to talk about a very important subject, the preamble of Indian constitution. What is there in the preamble? Is it part of the constitution? How it can be amended, what use of it can be made in interpreting the constitution, we will learn in the next lecture. Thank you very much, Danevad. ---  *Disclaimer: I am not asserting any claim over this content. The content is entirely from the Ministry of Law & Justice and NALSAR University of Law's joint online course on the Indian Constitution. My effort has been to make the transcript available for people like myself who prefer to read or quote it rather than to listen. This is part of my public self-archiving project. For more details, see [notes.daktre.com](https://notes.daktre.com) or [daktre.com](https://daktre.com).* Last updated: 2026-02-21 22:11