Evolution of parliamentary privileges in India till 1947

As in the case of other democratic institutions, the Indian Legislature has a very interesting past. Law making in India was the exclusive privilege of the Executive till the Charter Act of India, 1833, introduced a new machinery and method of legislation. By entrusting the duty of framing laws primarily and mainly to the fourth member of the Executive Council, the Parliament of England laid the foundation stone of the institu tion which after a complete round of evolution, emerged finally as the full-fledged parliament of independent India. This book gives a detailed account of how this 'infant institution' had to struggle at every stage of its evolution facing the vicis situdes of fortune undauntedly.

All the important landmarks of the struggle between the Indian Legislature and the Home Government and Executive which lasted over a century, have been dealt with. This includes among others, the Legislative Council under Lord Dalhousie, who was one of the greatest champions of parliamentary privi leges; the Act of 1861 which sought to prevent what Dalhousie's Council had hoped to achieve; the Government of India Act, 1909, which extended the elective principle first introduced in 1892 and for the first time in the history of the Indian Legisla ture established a non-official majority in all the provincial legislative Councils though not in the Council of the Governor General; the struggle for freedom of speech which grew as a convention; the Central Legislative Assembly under the dyna mic leadership of Vithalbhai Patel (the first elected President of an Indian Legislature) and the fight for a separate secretariat; and, finally, the efforts of the Central and Provincial Legisla sures to get a complete code of privileges incorporated in the Act of 1935.