740 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the Second Chamber or in the creation of a Second Chamber, provision is made that such a law shall not be deemed to be an amendment of the Constitution, in order to obviate the difficult procedure which has been provided in the Draft Constitution for the amendment of the Constitution.
I commend this article to the House.
*The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I do not think any reply is called for.
Mr. President : I shall now put the amendments to the vote. I shall take up Prof. Saksena’s amendment first and I shall put it in two parts.
[3 Amendments were negatived, one was withdrawn and the motion of Dr. Ambedkar as mentioned above was adopted New article 148A was added to the Constitution.]
ARTICLE 150
† The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Sir, I move :
That for article 150. the following be substituted :—
Composition of the Legislative Councils.
“150 (1) The total number of members in the Legislative Council of a State having such a Council shall not exceed
twenty-five per cent of the total number of members in the Assembly of the State : Provided that the total number of members in the Legislative Council of a State shall in no case be less than forty.
(2) The allocation of seats in the Legislative Council of a State, the manner of choosing persons to fill those seats, the qualifications to be possessed for being so chosen and the qualification entitling persons to vote in the choice of any such persons shall be such as Parliament may by law prescribe.”
The original article was modelled in part on article 60 of the first Draft of the Drafting Committee. Now, the House will remember that that article 60 of the original Draft related to the composition of the Upper Chamber at the Centre. For reasons, into which I need not go at the present stage, the House did not accept the principle embodied in the old article 60. That being so, the Drafting Committee felt that it would not be consistent to retain principle which has already been abandoned in the composition of the upper chamber for the Provinces. -That having been the resulting position, the Drafting Committee was presented with a problem to suggest an alternative. Now I must confess, that the Drafting Committee could not come to any definite conclusion
- CAD, Vol. IX, dated 30th July 1949, p. 20
† Ibid., pp. 21-22.