Framing of India's constitution v.1 c.2

In 1961, on the initiative of Prof. V. K. N. Menon, the Indian Institute of Public Administration sponsored a study of the evolution of the Constitution of India in the Constituent Assembly. The material for such a study was gathered from the reports, memoranda and data which influenced and shaped thinking in the Constituent Assembly. The original plan was to give in one volume in narrative form an elucidation of the main provisions of the Constitution as they were evolved through the different stages in the Constituent Assembly, with a com panion volume containing the texts of important documents. As the work progressed, however, a great deal of valuable and fresh material became available from different sources, and a considerable enlargement of the plan of the study became neces sary. Accordingly, it was decided to bring out four volumes of documents, in addition to the narrative volume on the evolu tion of the Constitution.

The value of these documents cannot be over-emphasized: it is these many of them unpublished notes, memoranda, drafts, comments and reactions-that vitally affected and often moulded decision in the Constituent Assembly and its commit tees and gave to our Constitution its present form and content. For a proper understanding of the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, some of them throw even more light on the provisions than the debates in the Constituent Assembly.

The task involved in the selection, out of a mass of original source-material, of documents suitable for reproduction proved to be far more formidable than was apparent at the beginning. The documents have been presented in as convenient and cogent a form as possible. They have been edited with intro ductory notes wherever necessary. The attempt, generally, has been to arrange the material in chronological order: but in some cases this has not been possible, as documents relating to certain specific subjects have had to be grouped together.