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572 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
practicable in present circumstances, and it was realised that the SubCommittee had not the necessary material to determine the precise limits of the advance. The Statutory Commission suggested such an increase in the number of electors as would bring that number up to ten per cent of the population. Some of our members thought that an increase to twenty-five per cent of the adult population was immediately practicable.
We recommend that an expert Franchise Commission should be appointed with instructions to provide for the immediate increase of the electorate so as to enfranchise not less than ten per cent of the total population and indeed a larger number—but not more than twenty-five per cent of the total population—if that should, on a full investigation, be found practicable and desirable.
We recommend that, in addition to providing for this increase the Commission should consider the introduction of a scheme by which all adults not entitled to a direct vote would be grouped together in primary groups of about 20, for the election of one representative member from each group, who would be entitled to vote in the Provincial elections either in the same constituencies as the directly qualified voters or in separate constituencies to be formed for them.
(Mr. Joshi, Mr. Shiva Rao, Dr. Ambedkar and Mr. Srinivasan regard these proposals as only “second best” and consider that the immediate introduction of adult suffrage is both practicable and desirable.
Sir Cowasji Jehangir, Sir P. C. Mitter and Mr. Basu do not assent to the maximum or minimum we have suggested, but desire the discretion of the Franchise Commission to be entirely unfettered.)
† Discussion on point 4 of Draft Report
Dr. Ambedkar: I beg to move an amendment to paragraph 4, namely. that in the second section, line 2, to add the following words after the word “practicable”— “with the electoral machinery available in present circumstances”. It would then read “Some difference of opinion existed as to the extent to which this was practicable with the electoral machinery available in present circumstances.”
Several Members: There are other grounds.
Dr. Ambedkar: That is my amendment. I leave it to the Chairman as the best judge to sum up the sense of the Committee, but the impression that was left upon my mind was that the majority of those who opposed universal adult suffrage as being practical politics for the immediate future did so mainly upon the ground that there was not sufficient electoral machinery in India to cope with the situation if everybody was allowed to vote.
Chairman : I do not think myself, Dr. Ambedkar, that was the sole ground on which the matter was put. It was one of the main grounds, but in
† Proceedings of the Sub-Committee No. VI (Franchise), pp. 152-54.