Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly

Also called: Drafting Committee · Topic: Framing the Indian Constitution · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Framing the Constitution"

Meaning

The Drafting Committee was a committee of the Constituent Assembly, set up on 29 August 1947 with B.R. Ambedkar as its Chairman, that prepared the Draft Constitution of India [2]. The Assembly then debated this Draft clause by clause. The Drafting Committee did not write India's aims; that was the Objectives Resolution. It turned those aims and the reports of other committees into one complete legal text.

Explanation

Background: why a drafting body was needed

• The Constituent Assembly (the body elected to write India's Constitution) had about 300 members. That is far too many people to write a legal text together.
• The Assembly had already agreed on its big aims:
• Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution (a statement of the main aims of the new Constitution) on 13 December 1946.

• The Assembly adopted it unanimously on 22 January 1947 [3].

• Other committees of the Assembly were also sending in reports. Vallabhbhai Patel drafted many of these reports.

• A small expert body was needed.
• Someone had to join all these aims and reports into one document.
• It had to be written in exact legal language.
• So the Assembly set up the Drafting Committee on 29 August 1947 [2].

Who was in it

• Chairman: B.R. Ambedkar
• He was trained as a lawyer and economist.
• Under British rule he was a political opponent of the Congress. He attacked the Congress for failing the Depressed Classes (the castes treated as "untouchable").

• After Independence he joined the Union Cabinet as law minister, on Gandhi's advice.

• Members named in the NCERT account:

• K.M. Munshi, a lawyer from Gujarat.

• Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar, a lawyer from Madras.

• Standard textbooks give the committee seven members in all.

• Most of the committee's leading members were trained in law. Drafting a constitution needed a lot of legal skill.

How it worked: the experts behind the committee

• B.N. Rau, Constitutional Advisor to the Government of India
• He wrote background papers on the political systems of other countries.

• This let the committee and the Assembly compare different models before choosing one.

• S.N. Mukherjee, Chief Draughtsman (the official who puts proposals into legal wording)

• He turned complicated proposals into clear legal language.

• Loose wording can be twisted later. His job was to close those gaps.

• Neither man was an elected member of the Drafting Committee. Both were civil servants who helped it.

Results

• Step 1: The committee prepared the Draft Constitution.
• Step 2: Ambedkar guided the Draft through the Assembly. He explained it, defended it and accepted changes as members debated each clause.
• Step 3: This took about three years of debate. The full record, the Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD), fills eleven bulky volumes.
• Step 4: The Assembly adopted the Constitution on 26 November 1949, and it came into force on 26 January 1950.
• Because he chaired the committee and led the Draft through the debates, Ambedkar is usually remembered as the leading maker of the Constitution.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the framing of the Constitution, 1946–1950. The committee was formed on 29 August 1947 [2], about two weeks after Independence.
• Place: the Constituent Assembly, which met in Delhi.
• Key people:
• B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman.
• K.M. Munshi (Gujarat) and Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar (Madras), lawyer members.
• B.N. Rau, Constitutional Advisor, and S.N. Mukherjee, Chief Draughtsman. Both were civil servants who helped the committee.

• Rajendra Prasad, President of the Assembly, who chaired the debates on the Draft. He made sure every member got a chance to speak.

• How we know:

• The Constituent Assembly Debates, the official printed record in eleven volumes.
• Volume V, 29 August 1947, records the setting up of the Drafting Committee [2].
• NCERT Class 12, Ch 4 "Framing the Constitution".

Don't confuse with

• Constituent Assembly: this was the whole elected body of about 300 members that debated and adopted the Constitution. The Drafting Committee was one small committee inside it, and it only prepared the Draft.
• Rajendra Prasad: he was President of the Constituent Assembly. Ambedkar was Chairman of the Drafting Committee. MCQs often swap these two.
• B.N. Rau: he was the Constitutional Advisor, a civil servant who wrote background papers. He was not the Chairman of the Drafting Committee and not one of its members.
• Objectives Resolution: Nehru moved it on 13 December 1946, and it set out the aims of the Constitution [3]. The Draft Constitution was a later, full legal text prepared by Ambedkar's committee.

Prelims Hooks

• The Drafting Committee was set up on 29 August 1947, with B.R. Ambedkar as Chairman [2].
• Order of events: Objectives Resolution moved (13 Dec 1946) → Objectives Resolution adopted (22 Jan 1947) [3] → Drafting Committee set up (29 Aug 1947) [2] → Constitution adopted (26 Nov 1949) → in force (26 Jan 1950).
• Lawyer members: K.M. Munshi (Gujarat) and Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar (Madras).
• Trap: B.N. Rau = Constitutional Advisor; S.N. Mukherjee = Chief Draughtsman. Neither was a member of the Drafting Committee.
• Ambedkar joined the Union Cabinet as law minister on Gandhi's advice, even though he had been a political opponent of the Congress.
• The debates on the Draft are recorded in the Constituent Assembly Debates, which run to eleven volumes.

Mains Points

• Competence was chosen over party loyalty.
• Ambedkar had opposed the Congress under British rule.
• Yet he was made law minister and Chairman of the Drafting Committee.

• This shows the leaders saw writing the Constitution as a national task, not a party one.

• Expertise and open debate worked together.

• Lawyers (Ambedkar, Munshi, Alladi) and civil servants (B.N. Rau, S.N. Mukherjee) supplied knowledge of other countries and exact legal wording.
• But the Draft was not simply accepted. It was argued clause by clause for about three years, with Rajendra Prasad giving every member a chance to speak.

• This helps explain why the Constitution borrows from many countries yet reads as one document, and why it had wide acceptance.

• The Draft was a negotiated settlement, not one person's work.

• Members clashed over language, the political system, the economic system and moral values.
• The committee's text was changed through these debates.
• Use this point to argue against the view that a small elite simply imposed the Constitution.

Related concepts

• Rajendra Prasad
• B.R. Ambedkar
• K.M. Munshi
• Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar
• B.N. Rau
• S.N. Mukherjee
• Women in the Constituent Assembly
• Rajkumari Amrit Kaur
• Vijayalakshmi Pandit
• Sucheta Kripalani

Read more

• The dominant voices