DRAFT CONSTITUTION 717
corresponding Provinces or the corresponding Indian States might have sued or been sued if this Constitution had not been enacted.
(2) if at the date of commencement of this Constitution—
(a) any legal proceedings are pending to which the Dominion of India is a party, the Union of India—”
that it is the new thing—
“shall he deemed to he substituted for the Dominion in those proceedings; and (b) any legal proceedings are pending to which a Province or an Indian State is a party, the corresponding State shall be deemed to be substituted for the province or the Indian State in those proceedings.”
Now this article, as it will be seen, merely prescribes the way in which suits and proceedings shall be stated. This has no other significance at all. The original wording was that it shall be sued in the name of the Government of India. Obviously the Government of India, that is to say, the executive government, is a fleeting body, being there at one time and then disappearing and some other people coming in and taking charge of the executive.
Shri H. V. Kamath : The Government is not fleeting; the personnel of the government may be fleeting.
The Honourable Dr. B.R. Ambedkar : There is a difference between the Government of India and the Union of India. The Government of India is not a legal entity ; the Union of India is a legal entity, a sovereign body which possesses rights and obligations and therefore it is only right that any suit brought by or against the Central Government should be in the name of the Union or against the Union.
Now, with regard to the term “corresponding States” some difficulty was expressed. It may no doubt be quite difficult to say which State corresponds to the old State. In order to meet this difficulty, provision has been made in article 303 (1) (g), which you will find on page
145 of the Draft Constitution, where it has been provided that a corresponding Province or corresponding State means in cases of doubt such Province or State as may be determined by the President to be the corresponding Province or, as the case may be, the corresponding State for the particular purpose in question. Therefore this difficulty— since the exact equivalent of an old Province or State is difficult to judge as there are bound to be some variations as to territory and so on—can be solved only by giving power to the President to determine which new particular State corresponds to which particular old State. So that provision has been made.
Sub-clause (2) deals with pending proceedings and all that sub-clause
(2) suggests is this : that when any proceedings are pending, where the