Making of the Constitution

It was in 1934 that the idea to create a Consitution for India without any
interference from other countries. (Especially from Britain) M.N. Roy first
coined this Idea, and then in 1935 Indian National Congress (INC) officially
demanded for the first time for the Constitution. Consequently, in 1938,
Jawaharlal Nehru announced on behalf of INC, that Indian Constitution would
be framed without any outside interference by the constituent assembly
members elected by Adult Franchise.

The demand was accepted by the British in 1940 and also it is known as
‘August Offer’. Following that, in 1942 Sir Stafford Cripps came to India with a
draft proposal by the British Government on the framing of Indian Constitution
after the World War II. Later on, it was denied by the Muslim League which
wanted to divide India into two autonomous parts.

Formation of Constituent Assembly

The Constituent Assembly was constituted in November 1946 under the
scheme formulated by the Cabinet Mission Plan. According to the Scheme, the
Constituent Assembly was to be 389. Out of these 296 seats to be allotted to
British India and 93 seats to the Princely States. Out of, 296 seats to British
India, 292 members were to be drawn from 11 Governor Province’s and four
from 4 Chief Commissioner’s Province’s.

Seats allocated to the British Provinces and the Princely States are based on
the Proportion to their respective Population. (1 seat for Million Population).
And also seats should be decided among the three principal communities like
Muslim, Sikhs and General Communities (Other than the First two
communities). The representatives of each community should be elected by the
members of that community by the method of Proportional representation
through a single transferable vote.

Elections to the Constituent Assembly

The Elections to the Constituent Assembly held in July- August 1946. As an
outcome, the Indian National Congress won 208 seats, and the Muslim League
won 73 seats, and the remaining 15 seats won by some small independent
groups. The Princely States decided to stay away from the Constituent
Assembly as they failed to show their majority.

The elected Constituent Assembly comprised representatives of all sections of

Indian Society like Hindu, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Anglo- Indians, Indian
Christians, SCs and STs including Women of all these sections. The
Constituent Assembly include with all personalities except Mahatma Gandhi
and MA Jinnah.
Working of Constituent Assembly
The Constituent Assembly held its first meeting on December 9, 1946. Only
211 members attended the Meeting. Muslim league entirely boycotted the
meeting demanding a separate state of Pakistan. Dr. Sachchidanand Sinha, the
Oldest member, was elected as the Interim (Temporary)President of the
Assembly, following the French Practice.

Later, on December 11, 1946, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and HC Mukherjee were
elected as the President and Vice- President of the Constituent Assembly
respectively. B.N Rau was appointed as the Constitutional Advisor to the
Assembly.

Historic Move By Jawaharlal Nehru

On December 13, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the historic ‘Objective
Resolution’ in the Constituent Assembly. It laid down the fundamentals and
Philosophy of the Constitutional Structure. It primarily speaks about India as
the Independent Sovereign Republic, the transformation of the territories of
British India into the Indian States, Judicial, Political and equal opportunities
to the citizens were the key points.

The Resolution was unanimously adopted by the Assembly on January 22,

1947.

Working for the Constitution

The Constituent Assembly appointed a number of committees to deal with the
different task of the Constitution making. Out of these 8 were major
committees and other were minor committees.

Among all the Committees, the most important committee was the Drafting
Committee in which Dr. B.R Ambedkar played a role as Chairman setup on
August 29, 1947.

The constitution committee members were:

1. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar – Chairman

2. N Gopalaswami Ayengar
3. Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer
4. K M Munshi
5. Md. Saadullah
6. N Madhava Rau
7. TT Krishnamachari (Who replaced DP Khaitan who died in 1948)

The core of the Constitution

The Structural part of the constitution of India was mostly derived from the
Government of India Act 1935. The Fundamental and the Directive Principles
parts were borrowed from the American and Irish Constitution respectively.

The Principles of Cabinet Government and the relations between the executive
and the legislature have been derived from the British Constitution. The other
provisions of the Constitution were from, Germany, USSR (Now Russia),
Canada, Australia, France, South Africa, Japan.

Hence Our Indian Consitution is called as ‘Borrowed Constitution’ or ‘Patched

Constitution’.
But in reality, the Constitution framers made necessary modifications in the
features borrowed from other constitutions for their suitability to the Indian
conditions.

Indian Constitution – Completion

In all, the Constituent Assembly had 11 sessions over two years, 11 months
and 18 days to complete the Indian Constitution. In this time, the Constitution
makers had gone through the Constitutions of about 60 nations. The total
expenditure incurred during the making of Indian Constitution is Rs. 64 Lakh.

Finally, The Indian Constitution was adopted on Nov 26th, 1949. The wiki
entry says, “The Constitution of India was adopted on 26 November 1949 and
came into effect on 26 January 1950, proclaiming India to be a sovereign,
democratic republic.