DRAFT CONSTITUTION 721
body appointed at the time when there is an election on the anvil. The Committee, has steered a middle course. What the drafting committee proposes by sub-clause (2) is to have permanently in office one man called the Chief Election Commissioner so that the skeleton machinery would always be available. Elections no doubt will generally take place at the end of five years; but there is this question namely that a bye-election may take place at any time. The Assembly may be dissolved before its period of five years has expired. Consequently, the electoral rolls will have to be kept up to date all the time so that the new election may take place without any difficulty. It was therefore felt that having regard to these exigencies, it would be sufficient if there was permanently in session one officer to be called the Chief Election Commissioner, while when the elections are coming up, the President may further add to the machinery by appointing other members to the Election Commission.
Now, Sir, the original proposal under article 289 was that there should be one Commission to deal with the elections to the Central Legislature, both the Upper and the Lower House, and that there should be a separate Election Commission for each province and each State, to be appointed by the Governor or the Ruler of the State. Comparing that with the present article 289, there is undoubtedly, a radical change. This article proposes to centralise the election machinery in the hands of a single Commission to be assisted by regional Commissioners, not working under the provincial Government, but working under the superintendence and control of the Central Election Commission. As I said, this is undoubtedly a radical change. But, this change has become necessary because today we find that in some of the provinces of India, the population is a mixture. There are what may be called original inhabitants, so to say, the native people of a particular province. Along with them there are other people residing there, who are either racially, linguistically or culturally different from the dominant people who are the occupants of that particular Province. It has been brought to the notice both of the Drafting Committee as well as of the central Government that in these provinces the executive Government is instructing or managing things in such a manner that those people who do not belong to them either racially, culturally or linguistically, are being excluded from being brought on the electoral rolls. The House will realise that franchise is a most fundamental thing in a democracy. No person who is entitled to be brought into the electoral rolls on the grounds