z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-05.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 369
PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE 369
that men of other class and occupations found a sufficient number of seats in the councils and that it was possible that this could be done by prescribing certain definite qualifications for rural seats. The question was carefully examined by the Southborough Committee, who in paragraph 29 of their report referred to the fact that some of the local governments, namely, those of the United Provinces, Behar and Orissa and Assam did not press for the insertion of the residential qualification, while the Governments of Bengal, Bombay, Madras and the Punjab held that it would be detrimental to the interests of a large proportion of the new electorate to admit as candidates, persons who were not resident in the areas they sought to represent. The majority of the Southborough Committee were on principle opposed to the residential qualification, but they resolved, by way of a compromise, to impose the restriction in the Central Provinces. Bombay and the Punjab but not in the remaining provinces. The Government of India, in expressing their views upon the recommendations of the Southborough Committee, accepted those recommendations, but pointed out that the Committee’s treatment of the question had placed them in some difficulty in that while the Committee accepted the views of some of the local governments in favour of the restriction, they discarded the views of some others who equally pressed for it. The Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Government of India Bill recommended that the compromise suggested by the Franchise Committee should be accepted. This was done and the residential qualification was imposed only in the Central Provinces, Bombay and the Punjab. I would point out that subsequent to this the residential qualification was done away with in the Punjab in the revision of the rules which proceeded the General Elections of 1923. The Punjab Government themselves in the opinion which they gave to the Muddiman Committee stated that for the first general elections the residential qualification wave the rural representatives an entry from which they had not been dispossessed, and there appeared to be no adequate reason for restoring the qualification. The position at present therefore is that Bombay and the Central Provinces are the only provinces in which the residential qualification still exists. In the Central Provinces the restriction is not interpreted as strictly as it is in this Presidency. It is, in my opinion, difficult to justify the retention of this restriction in this the most advanced Province in India when provinces much more backward have felt no necessity for it. The retention of this qualification is, in my opinion, to some extent responsible for the election of inferior men to the Councils and for the keeping out of the Councils men of position, ability and proved political capacity who are mostly found in the larger urban areas and who by the existence of the qualification are prevented from seeking election anywhere else if for some reason they are unable to secure election from their own residential area. I therefore recommend that the residential qualification should now be abolished so far as this Presidency is concerned.