Indian Constituent Assembly

1. Idea for a Constituent
Assembly for drafting a con-stitution for India was first
provided by Bal Gangadhar
Tilak in 1895.
2. The elections for the
first Constituent Assembly
were held in July 1946. Ini-tially it had 389 members,
but later the reformed
Assembly had 324 members.  

3. The State of Hydra-bad did not participate in
elections to the Constituent
Assembly.
4. The first meeting of
Constituent Assembly was
held on December 9, 1946—
its president was Dr Sacchi-danand Sinha.
5. The second meeting
was held on December 11,
1946. Its president was Dr
Rajendra Prasad.
6.  The Objectives Reso-lution was passed under
chairmanship of J.L. Nehru.
7. The  Draft of Indian
Constitution was presented
in October 1947. President of
the Drafting Committee was
Bhim Rao Ambedkar.
8. The Flag Committee
worked under J.B. Kripalani.
9. The total time con-sumed to prepare the draft
was 2 years, 11 months, 18
days. Total 11 meetings
were held for this.
10. The Indian Constitu-tion was enacted on Novem-ber 26, 1946 and put into
force on January 26, 1950.
11. The Constitution
today has 444 Articles and 12
schedules.  Originally there
were  395 Articles and 8
schedules.
12. SOCIALIST, SECU-LAR, INTEGRITY—these
words were added to the
Preamble later, through the
42nd Amendment, 1976.
13. The Preamble con-tains  aims and objectives of
our Constitution.
14.  Fundament Rights
are contained in Part III—
called “Magna Carta”  of the
Constitution. The idea was
borrowed from USA. Initial-ly there were 7 fundamental
rights, now there are only 6.
(The Right to Property was
deleted by the 44th amend-ment in 1978. It is now a
judicial right—it has been
moved to Article 300(A).)
15. The Supreme Court
judgement in  Keshwanand
Bharti vs Kerala  case provid-ed that Fundamental Rights
can be altered by the Parlia-ment as long as the basic
structure of the Constitution
remains intact.
16. The  Minerva Mills
case ruling of the Supreme
Court, however, ruled that
Fundamental rights are basic
part of the Constitution. The
power to alter them was
snatched away.
17. Fundamental Right
of Equality provides for:
—Equality in govern-ment jobs  (Article 16).
—No discriminations
(Article 15).
—No untouchability
(Article 17).
—Abolition of titles
(Article 18).
18. The important free-doms granted are:
—Against exploitation
(Article 23).
—Against child labour
(Article 24).
19. The Right to Consti-tutional Remedies is provid-ed under Article 32. The
Constitution provides that
High Courts and the
Supreme Court can issue
various writs (written
orders) to safeguard free-dom of an individual. There
are five types of writs:
Habeas Corpus—“may I
have the body”—it orders to
present reasons as well as
physical presence of a body
in court, within 24 hours of
arrest.
Mandamus—issued to
person, office or court—to
enforce duties—also called
“Param Aadesh”.
Prohibition—issued to
inferior courts, by superior
courts—it prohibits (stops)
action of acts outside their
jurisdiction.
Quo Warranto—it asks
how one has gained unau-thorised office.
Certiorari —Higher
Court takes over case from
lower courts.
Dr Ambedkar has called
this article as “soul” of the
Constitution.
20. Directive Principles
of State Policy act as guide-lines or morals for the gov-ernment. They are contained
in Part IV of the Constitu-tion. They were borrowed
from Ireland. Some impor-tant directive principles are:
—Gram Panchayats
(Article 40).
—Uniform civil code
(Article 44).
—Free and compulsory
education  (Article 45).
21. Fundamental duties
are contained in part IV(A).
There are ten fundamental
duties listed in the Constitu-tion. This idea was borrowed
from Russia.
22. The Vice President is
the Chairman of the Rajya
Sabha.  However, he is not a
member of any House.
23. If a member is found
sitting in another House of
Parliament, of which he is
not a member, he has to pay
a fine of Rs 5000.
24. Rajya Sabha has 250
members—238 elected and
12 nominated by the Presi-dent. Uttar Pradesh elects
maximum number of mem-bers for the Rajya Sabha (34),
followed by Bihar (22) and
Maharashtra (19).
25. In one year time, the
President must hold at least
two meetings of the Rajya
Sabha.
26. If a state of Emer-gency is declared, the Lok
Sabha is dissolved, but not
the Rajya Sabha (It is a per-manent House).
27. Lok Sabha has 547
members—545 elected and 2
nominated from the Anglo-Indian Community.
28. During a state of
emergency, the tenure of Lok
Sabha can be extended by a
maximum of one year.
29. Maximum number
of members of Lok Sabha are
elected from Uttar Pradesh
(80 members), followed by
Bihar (54) and Maharashtra
559 ! JANUARY 2004 ! THE COMPETITION MASTER
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Quick Revision Notes™
on Indian Constitution
(48).
30. Minimum age for
becoming member of Lok
Sabha is 25 years and Rajya
Sabha is 30 years. Minimum
age to be eligible for the post
of the  President is 35 years.
31.  The President is
elected by members of both
Houses of Parliament and
State Legislative Assemblies.
32. The Vice President is
elected by all members of the
Parliament.
33. To discuss an impor-tant topic, the normal proce-dure of the Parliament is
stopped under the  Adjourn-ment motion.
34. Decision about whe-ther a Bill is a Money Bill or
not is taken by the Lok
Sabha Speaker.
35. The first High
Courts in India were estab-lished at Bombay, Calcutta,
and Madras, in 1862. Alla-habad and Delhi were estab-lished next in 1866.
36. Maximum age to
remain a High Court judge is
62 years and maximum age
to remain a Supreme Court
judge is 65 years.
37. The process for
removal of Comptroller and
Auditor General of India is
same as that of judges of the
Supreme Court.
38. Attorney General is
the law expert to govern-ment. He can participate and
speak in both Houses of Par-liament, but is not allowed to
vote.
39. The idea of having a
Lokpal to check corruption at
the highest level has been
borrowed from “Ombuds-man” of Sweden. In the
States, we have the Lok Ayuk-ta.
40. There are three types
of Emergencies that can be
proclaimed by the President.
Emergency under Article
352—due to war or internal
rebellion. (Implemented
three times (1962, 71, 75).)
Emergency under Article
356—Constitutional prob-lems. (Implemented many
times, in various States like
J&K, Punjab, etc.)
Emergency under Article
360—Financial Emergency.
(Not implemented so far).
41. The Constitution ini-tially recognised 14 National
Languages. Later, four more
were added. These were:
Sindhi (21st amendment),
Nepali, Konkani and
Manipuri (71st amendment).
42. To gain the status of
a National Party, a political
party must be recognised in
four or more States, attaining
at least 4% votes on national
scale and 9% in each State.
43. The flag of the Con-gress party was accepted as
the National Flag (with few
changes) on  July 22, 1947.
44. The new Flag Code
of India gives freedom to
individuals to hoist the flag
on all days, but with due
respect to the flag.
45.  The Question hour
in the Parliament is observed
from 11 am  to 12 noon. The
Zero hour is observed from
12:00 noon  to 1:00 pm.
46. Balwant Rai Mehta
Committee suggested a
three-tier structure for Pan-chayati Raj—Gram Pancha-yat village level, Panchayat
Samiti at block level and Zila
Parishad in districts.
47. First Constitutional
Amendment—1951—put a
ban on propagating ideas to
harm friendly relations with
foreign countries.
48. Planning Commis-sion is only an advisory and
specialist body. Its chairman
is the Prime Minister.
49. National Develop-ment Council is the main
body concerned with the
actual planning process. Its
chairman is also the Prime
Minister.
50. The  first leader of
the Opposition was Ram
Subhag Singh, in 1969.
51. The shortest Lok
Sabha span was 13 days
(12th Lok Sabha in 1998).
52. Although the Parlia-ment can pass impeachment
motion against judges, their
conduct cannot be discussed
by it.
53. There are at present
18 High Courts in India.
54. Article 370  gives
special status to Jammu &
Kashmir.
55.  The Indian Consti-tution was the first of the
preceding two centuries
which was not imposed by
an imperial power, but was
made by the people them-selves, through representa-tives in a Constituent
Assembly.
56. The Preamble of the
Indian Constitution is not
enforceable in a court of law.
It  states the objects which
the Constitution seeks to
establish.
57. The Indian Constitu-tion endows the Judiciary
with power of declaring a
law as unconstitutional if it
is beyond the competence of
the Legislature according to
the distribution of powers
provided by the Constitu-tion, or if it is in contraven-tion of the fundamental
rights or of any other
mandatory provision,  e.g.
Articles 286, 299, 301 and
304.
58.  As part of the inte-gration of various Indian
States into the Dominion of
India a three-fold process of
integration, known as the
Patel Scheme, was imple-mented.
(i) 216 States were
merged into the respective
Provinces, geographically
contiguous to them. These
merged States were included
in the territories of the States
in Part B in the First Sche-dule of the Constitution. The
process of merger started
with the merger of Orissa
and Chattisgarh States with
the then province of Orissa,
on January 1, 1948. The last
instance was merger of
Cooch-Behar with West Ben-gal in January 1950.
(ii)  61 States were con-verted into Centrally-admin-istered areas and included in
Part C of the First Schedule.
(iii)  The third form was
consolidation of groups of
States into new viable units,
known as Union of States.
The first Union formed was
the Saurashtra Union on
February 15, 1948. The last
one was Union of Travan-core-Cochin on July 1, 1949.
As many as 275 States were
integrated into five
Unions—Madhya Bharat,
Patiala and East Punjab
States Union, Rajasthan,
Saurashtra and Travancore-Cochin. These were included
in Part B of the First Sche-dule. Besides, Hyderabad,
J&K and Mysore were also
included in Part B.
59. At the time of acces-sion to the Dominion of
India, the States had acceded
only on three subjects
(Defence, Foreign Affairs
and Communications). Lat-er, revised Instruments of
Accession were signed by
which all States  acceded in
respect of all matters includ-ed in Union and Concurrent
Lists, except only those relat-ing to taxation.
60.  The process of inte-gration culminated in the
Constitution (7th Amend-ment) Act, 1956, which abol-ished Part B States as a class
and included all the States in
Part A and B in one list.