766 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
It is. now felt that no useful purpose could be served, if there is a real emergency by which the President is required to act, by allowing the Governor, in the first instance, the power to suspend the Constitution merely for a fortnight. If the President is ultimately to take the responsibility of entering into the provincial field in order to sustain the constitution embodied in this Constitution, then it is much better that the President should come into the field right at the very beginning. On the basis that that is the correct approach to the situation, namely that if the responsibility is of the President then the President from the very beginning should come into the field, it is obvious that article 188 is a futility and is not required at all. That is the reason why I have proposed that article 188 be deleted.
Now I come to article 277-A. Some people might think that article
277-A is merely a pious declaration, that it ought not to be there. The Drafting Committee has taken a different view and I would therefore like to explain why it is that the Drafting Committee feels that article 277-A ought to be there. I think it is agreed that our Constitution, notwithstanding the many provisions which are contained in it whereby the Centre has been given powers to override the Provinces, nonetheless is a Federal Constitution and when we say that the Constitution is a Federal Constitution it means this, that the Provinces are as sovereign in their field which is left to them by the Constitution as the Centre is in the field which is assigned to it. In other words, barring the provisions which permit the Centre to override any legislation that may be passed by the Provinces, the Provinces have a plenary authority to make any law for the peace, order and good government of that Province. Now, when once the Constitution makes the provinces sovereign and gives them plenary powers to make any law for the peace, order and good government of the province, really speaking, the intervention of the Centre or any other authority must be deemed to be barred, because that would be an invasion of the sovereign authority of the province. That is a fundamental proposition which, I think, we must accept by reason of the fact that we have a Federal Constitution. That being so, if the Centre is to interfere in the administration of provincial affairs, as we propose to authorise the Centre by virtue of articles 278 and 278-A, it must be by and under some obligation, which the Constitution imposes upon the Centre. The invasion must not be an invasion which