DRAFT CONSTITUTION 751
both going and coming back ? The third question is, how is the period within which the Council is to act to be reckoned. To use the phraseology which is familiar to those who know the law of limitation, what is to be the starting point ? So far as the present amendment is concerned, it is proposed that the Bill should have two journeys. It goes in the first instance, it comes back and it goes again. It may be possible to argue that more journeys than two are to be permitted. As I said, this is a question of practical politics. We must see some end, or dead end, at which we must allow the authority of the Lower House to become paramount, and the Drafting Committee thought that two journeys were enough for the purpose to allow the Upper House to act as a revising Chamber.
Now, with regard to the time to be permitted, to the Upper House during these journeys to consider the Bill, the proposal of the Drafting Committee is two months. Now it may be three months, in the first case, as I am accepting the amendment moved by my Friend, Mr. T. T. Krishnamachari, and in the second case it would be one month.
My Friend Pandit Kunzru said that the Drafting Committee had no fixed mind, that it was changing from moment to moment, that it was fickle, and he referred to the original Draft set out in the Draft Constitution laying down six months. Here again, I should like to point out to him that the period lo be allowed to each House is not a matter of principle at all. It is a matter only of practical politics and the Drafting Committee came to the conclusion that six months was too long a period. In fact, it felt that even three months was too long a period. But it is quite conceivable that a Bill like the Zamindari Bill which has a large number of clauses, may emerge from the Lower House and may be sent to the Upper House for consideration. But for such exceptional cases, I think my Friend will agree that other measures would not, be of the same magnitude or the same substance. Consequently, we thought that three months was a reasonable period to allow to the Upper House in the case when the Bill goes on its first journey, because after all what is the Upper House going to do ? The Upper House in acting upon a Bill which has been sent to it by the Lower Chamber is not going to re-draft the whole thing ; it is not going to alter every clause. It is only certain clauses which it may feel of public importance that it would like to deal with, and I should have thought that for a limited legislative activity of that sort, three months in the first instance was a large enough period to allow to the Upper House and would not certainly curtail the