THE DRAFT CONSTITUTION 97
THE GAZETTE OF INDIA EXTRAORDINARY, FEB. 26,1948 129
present as Governors’ Provinces, or Chief Commissioners’ Provinces or Indian States. Some difference between the Units there will undoubtedly remain even in the new Constitution; and in order to mark this difference, the Committee has divided the States into three classes: those enumerated in Part I of the First Schedule, those enumerated in Part II, and those enumerated in Part III. These correspond respectively to the existing Governors’ Provinces, Chief Commissioners’ Provinces and Indian States.
It will be noticed that the Committee has used the term Union instead of Federation. Nothing much turns on the name, but the Committee has preferred to follow the language of the preamble to the British North America Act, 1867, and considered that there are advantages in describing India as a Union although its Constitution may be federal in structure.
Articles 5 & 6 4. Citizenship.—The Committee has given anxious and prolonged consideration to the question of citizenship of the Union. The Committee has thought it necessary that, in order to be a citizen of the Union at its inception, a person must have some kind of territorial connection with the Union whether by birth, or descent, or domicile. The Committee doubts whether it will be wise to admit as citizens those who, without any such connection with the territory of India, may be prepared to swear allegiance to the Union; for if other States were to copy such a provision, we might have within the Union a large number of persons who, though born and permanently resident therein, would owe allegiance to a foreign State. The Committee has, however, kept in view the requirements of the large number of displaced persons who have had to migrate to India within recent months, and has provided for them a specially easy mode of acquiring domicile and, thereby citizenship. What they have to do (assuming that they or either of their parents or any of their grand-parents were born in India or Pakistan) is—
(a) to declare before a District Magistrate in
India that they desire to acquire a domi cile in India, and