Central_Legislative_Assembly

Central Legislative Assembly

Central Legislative Assembly

Lower house of the British Indian Imperial Legislative Council (1919–1947)

For the body based in Nairobi, see East Africa Central Legislative Assembly.

The Central Legislative Assembly was the lower house of the Imperial Legislative Council, the legislature of British India. It was created by the Government of India Act 1919, implementing the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. It was also sometimes called the Indian Legislative Assembly and the Imperial Legislative Assembly. The Council of State was the upper house of the legislature for India.

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As a result of Indian independence, the Legislative Assembly was dissolved on 14 August 1947 and its place taken by the Constituent Assembly of India and the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.

Composition

The new Assembly was the lower house of a bicameral parliament, with a new Council of State as the upper house, reviewing legislation passed by the Assembly. However, both its powers and its electorate were limited.[1][2]

The Assembly had 145 members who were either nominated or indirectly elected from the provinces.[3]

The Legislative Assembly had no members from the princely states, as they were not part of British India. On 23 December 1919, when King-Emperor George V gave royal assent to the Government of India Act 1919, he also made a proclamation which created the Chamber of Princes, to provide a forum for the states to use to debate national questions and make their collective views known to the Government of India.[4]

Nominated members

The nominated members were officials or non-officials and nominated by the Government of India and the provinces.

Officials

There were a total of 26 nominated officials out of which 14 were nominated by the Government of India from the Viceroy's Executive Council, Council of State and from the Secretariat. The other 12 came from the provinces. Madras, Bombay and Bengal nominated two officials while United Provinces, Punjab, Bihar & Orissa, Central Provinces, Assam and Burma nominated one each.[citation needed]

Non-officials

There were a total of 15 nominated non-officials out of which 5 were nominated by the Government of India representing five special interests namely Associated Chambers of Commerce, Indian Christians, Labour interests, Anglo-Indians and the Depressed Classes. The other 10 non-officials were nominated from the provinces namely two from Bengal, United Provinces and Punjab and one each from Bombay, Bihar & Orissa, Berar and the North West Frontier Province.[citation needed]

Elected members

Initially, of its 142 members, 101 were elected and 41 were nominated. Of the 101 elected members, 52 came from general constituencies, 29 were elected by Muslims, 2 by Sikhs, 7 by Europeans, 7 by landlords, and 4 by business men.[5][6] Later, one seat each was added for Delhi, Ajmer-Merwara and the North West Frontier Province.[citation needed]

The constituencies were divided as follows:[7]

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The Government of India Act 1935 introduced further reforms. The Assembly continued as the lower chamber of a central Indian parliament based in Delhi, with two chambers, both containing elected and appointed members. The Assembly increased in size to 250 seats for members elected by the constituencies of British India, plus a further 125 seats for the Indian Princely states. However, elections for the reformed legislature never took place.

Inauguration

The Central Legislative Assembly met in the Council Hall and later to the Viceregal Lodge in Old Delhi both of which are now located in Delhi University.[8][9] A new "Council House" was conceived in 1919 as the seat of the future Legislative Assembly, the Council of State, and the Chamber of Princes. The foundation stone was laid on 12 February 1921 and the building was opened on 18 January 1927 by Lord Irwin, the Viceroy and Governor-General. The Council House later changed its name to Parliament House, or Sansad Bhavan, and is the present-day home of the Parliament of India.[10][11]

The Assembly, the Council of State, and the Chamber of Princes were officially opened in 1921 by King George V's uncle, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn[12]

Elections

The first elections to the new legislatures took place in November 1920 and proved to be the first significant contest between the Moderates and the Non-cooperation movement, whose aim was for the elections to fail. The Non-cooperators were at least partly successful in this, as out of almost a million electors for the Assembly, only some 182,000 voted.[13]

Main article: 1920 Indian general election

After the withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement, a group within the Indian National Congress formed the Swaraj Party and contested the elections in 1923 and 1926. The Swaraj Party led by Motilal Nehru as the leader of the Opposition was able to secure the defeat, or at least the delay, of finance bills and other legislation. However, after 1926, the members of the Swaraj Party either joined the government or returned to the Congress which continued its boycott of the legislature during the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Main article: 1923 Indian general election
Main article: 1926 Indian general election
Main article: 1930 Indian general election

In 1934, the Congress ended its boycott of the legislatures and contested the elections to the fifth Central Legislative Assembly held that year.[14]

Main article: 1934 Indian general election

The last elections to the assembly were held in 1945.

Main article: 1945 Indian general election

The electorate of the Assembly was never more than a very small fraction of the population of India. In the British House of Commons on 10 November 1942, the Labour MP Seymour Cocks asked the Secretary of State for India Leo Amery "What is the electorate for the present Central Legislative Assembly?" and received the written answer "The total electorate for the last General Election (1934) for the Central Legislative Assembly was 1,415,892."[15]

Important events

  • In March 1926, Motilal Nehru demanded a representative conference to draft a constitution conferring full Dominion status on India, to be enacted by the parliament. When this demand was rejected by the Assembly, Nehru and his colleagues walked out of the house.[16]
  • On 8 April 1929, the Indian revolutionaries Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw a bomb into the corridors of the Assembly in order to show their discontent and frustration against the British government's decision to enact the Trade Disputes Bill and the Public Safety Bill. The bomb explosion was followed by a shower of leaflets citing their reasons and ideology behind the act and few gunshots in the air, shouting "Inquilab Zindabad!" ("Long Live the Revolution!"). A few members were injured such as George Ernest Schuster (the finance member of the Viceroy's Executive Council), Sir Bomanji A. Dalal, P. Raghavendra Rau, Shankar Rao and S. N. Roy.[17][18] The revolutionaries surrendered themselves and the weapon without any resistance as per plan instead of escaping. On 12 June 1929 they were sentenced to Penal transportation for the bombing, having defended the case themselves.[19]
  • Due to the return of the Congress in 1934 as the main opposition, there was a sharp increase in the number of government defeats in the Assembly. In a British House of Commons debate on 4 April 1935, the Secretary of State for India, Samuel Hoare, stated that "The number of divisions in the Legislative Assembly since the recent elections and up to the 25th March in which Government have been successful is five. The number of adverse divisions in the same period is seventeen." Henry Page Croft then asked "Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Government would have been successful on any occasion without the support of the nominated members?" Hoare replied "I could not answer that question without looking into the figures, but in any case I see no reason to differentiate between one class of member and another."[20]
  • In 1936 during the Arab revolt in Palestine, Indian troops were sent there. In the Assembly, the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, disallowed all questions and resolutions which asked him to express the concern of Indian Muslims about the position of Arabs in Palestine.[21]
  • On 27 February 1942, during the Second World War, the Assembly held a secret session to discuss the war situation.[22]

Presidents of the Assembly

The presiding officer (or speaker) of the Assembly was called the President. While the Government of India Act 1919 provided for the President to be elected, it made an exception in the case of the first President, who was to be appointed by the Government. The Governor-General appointed Frederick Whyte, a former Liberal member of the British House of Commons who had been a parliamentary private secretary to Winston Churchill.[23][24] Sachchidananda Sinha was the Deputy President of Assembly in 1921.[25]

Ganesh Vasudev Mavlankar was the last President of the Assembly till the Assembly came to an end on 14 August 1947. He became the first Speaker of the Constituent Assembly of India, and in 1952 the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India.[26]

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Notable members

Dissolution

As per the Indian Independence Act 1947, the Central Legislative Assembly and the Council of States ceased to exist and the Constituent Assembly of India became the central legislature of India.

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Encyclopædia Britannica 1974, vol. 9 Macropaedia Hu-Iv, p. 417
  2. [2]
    Bolitho, Hector (2006) [First published 1954]. Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan. Oxford University Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-19-547323-0. The introduction of a 'two-house' parliamentary system, with a Council of State and a Central Legislative Assembly.
  3. [3]
    Report of the Indian Statutory Commission. p. 168.
  4. [4]
    V. D. Mahajan, Modern Indian History (New Delhi: Chand Publishing, 2020), p. 584
  5. [5]
    Rāmacandra Kshīrasāgara, Dalit Movement in India and its Leaders, 1857–1956, M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1994, p. 142
  6. [6]
    "-- Schwartzberg Atlas -- Digital South Asia Library".
  7. [7]
    Mira, H. N. (1921). The Govt Of India Act 1919 Rules Thereunder And Govt Reports 1920. N.N.Mitter Annual Register Office.
  8. [8]
    Iyengar, A. S. (2001). Role of Press and Indian Freedom Struggle. APH. p. 26. ISBN 9788176482561.
  9. [9]
    "DU plans heritage tour, light and sound show at Viceregal Lodge - Indian Express".
  10. [10]
    John F. Riddick (2006) The History of British India: a Chronology, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 181
  11. [11]
    Archival Photos of Parliament House at rajyasabha.nic.in
  12. [12]
    Arthur, Prince, first duke of Connaught and Strathearn in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
  13. [13]
    John Coatman, India, the Road to Self-Government (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1942) full text online
  14. [14]
    Varahagiri Venkata Giri, My Life and Times (Macmillan Co. of India, 1976), p. 97
  15. [15]
    "Central Legislative Assembly Etectorate (1942)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Written-Answers. 10 November 1942. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
  16. [16]
    Jawaharlal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru: an autobiography, with musings on recent events in India (1936)
  17. [17]
    "Bombs Thrown into Assembly". Evening Tribune. 8 April 1930. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
  18. [18]
    "TWO BOMBS THROWN". The Examiner (DAILY ed.). Launceston, Tasmania. 10 April 1929. p. 4. Retrieved 29 August 2013 – via National Library of Australia.
  19. [19]
    Bhagat Singh remembered – Daily Times of Pakistan
  20. [20]
    "Central Legislative Assembly (1935)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons. 4 April 1935. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
  21. [21]
    Joan G. Roland, The Jewish Communities of India: identity in a colonial era (Transaction Publishers, 1998), p. 197
  22. [22]
    Subhash C. Kashyap. Parliamentary Procedure (Universal Law Publishing Co, 2006), p. 139
  23. [23]
    Ajita Ranjan Mukherjea, Parliamentary Procedure in India (Oxford, 1983), p. 43
  24. [24]
    Philip Laundy, The Office of Speaker in the Parliaments of the Commonwealth (Quiller, 1984), p. 175
  25. [25]
    "he entered the Central Legislative Assembly in 1921 not only as one of its members, but ;,'Is Deputy President also". Archived from the original on 6 July 2016. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  26. [26]
    Subhash C. Kashyap, Dada Saheb Mavalankar, Father of Lok Sabha (Published for the Lok Sabha Secretariat by the National Publishing House, 1989), pp. 9–11)
  27. [27]
    Murry, K. C. (2007). Naga Legislative Assembly and Its Speakers. Mittal Publication. p. 20. ISBN 9788183241267.
  28. [28]
    Kashyap, Subhash (1994). History of the Parliament of India. Under the auspices of Centre for Policy Research, Shipra. ISBN 9788185402345.
  29. [29]
    Ambeth, அம்பேத்: Perunthalaivar M. C. Rajah -- First Leader who Organized the Scheduled Classes at the National Level in India
  30. [30]
    Ambeth, அம்பேத்: Thanthai N. Sivaraj -- National Level Leader Who Worked for the Scheduled Classes of India.
  31. [31]
    Rajya Sabha Past Members' Bio-Data http://rajyasabha.nic.in/rsnew/pre_member/1952_2003/d.pdf
  32. [32]
    The Hindu dated 15 February 1952, New Lieutenant-Governors[usurped] online
  33. [33]
    Paul R. Brass, Kidwai, Rafi Ahmad (1894–1954), politician in India in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
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