1134 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
task of examining not less than 395 articles which are now part of the Constitution. As I said, the Drafting Committee had not even one month, but that even is not a correct statement, because according to Rule 38-R and other rules, the Drafting Committee was required to circulate the Draft Constitution as revised by them five days before this session of the House. As a matter of fact the Constitution was circulated on the 6th of November, practically eight days before the commencement of this session. Consequently the time available for the Drafting Committee was shorter by eight days. Again, it must be taken into consideration that in order to enable the Drafting Committee to send out the Draft Constitution in time, they had to hand over the draft they had prepared to the printer some days in advance to be able to obtain the copies some time before they were actually despatched. The draft was handed over to the printer on the 4th of November. It will be seen that the printer had only one day practically to carry out the alterations and the amendments suggested by the Drafting Committee. It is impossible either for the printer or for the Drafting Committe or the gentleman in charge of proof corrections to produce a correct copy of such a huge document containing 395 articles within one day.
That in my judgement, is a sufficient justification for the long corrigenda which the Drafting Committee had to issue in order to draw attention to the omissions and the mistakes which had been left uncorrected in the copy as was presented to them by the printer on the 5th. Deducting all these days, it will be noticed that the Drafting Committee had barely ten days left to them to carry out this huge task. It is this shortness of time, practically ten days, which in my judgement justifies the issue of the second list of amendments now embodied in List II. If the Drafting Committee had a longer time to consider this matter they would have been undoubtedly in a position to avoid either the issue of the corrigenda or the Supplementary List of Amendments, and I hope that the House will forgive such trouble as is likely to be caused to them by having to refer to the corrigenda and to the Second List of Amendments for which the Drafting Committee is responsible.
Sir, it is unnecessary for me to discuss at this stage the nature of the amendments and changes proposed by the Drafting Committee in the Draft Constitution. The nature of the changes have been indicated in paragraph 2 of the Report. It will be seen that there are really three classes of changes which the Drafting Committee has made. The first change is merely renumbering of articles, clauses, sub-clauses and the