246 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
dealt with a Bill. In that case, it would require verbatim reports of all proceedings in a Select Committee. We can reject the report or accept the report or do anything with the report but how the Select Committee dealt with it is a matter which, I think is not relevant and it is not the practice of the House either to go into it. Otherwise, every future Select Committee will have to give us a verbatim record of its proceedings, so that we can judge of the propriety. . . .
Mr. Speaker : I am afraid various points of order are being raised and stated too widely. As regards the present point, if the position is that the Bill which was sent by this House was not considered at all by the Select Committee, I think it would be perfectly competent to go into the question as to whether the Select Committee did or did not consider. Then the question will arise as to how far it would be permissible to go into the proceedings of the Select Committee and to that my present reaction is that this House or myself will not be sitting as a fact-finding committee or court, but we shall take into consideration—we are entitled to take into consideration—what the Select Committee itself has stated in its report, and therefore, the matter will be more or less one for inference—coming inferentially to some conclusion as to what the Select Committee did and not by taking evidence of every member of the Select Committee and taking extra evidence. Now, I may point out to my friend Pandit Bhargava, that in spite of all that he has said the argument is not being advanced any further. Whether you call it a breach of the privileges of the House or abuse of procedure, the argument, in short, comes to this—that the Select Committee considered a substitute Bill; that it did not consider the original Bill sent by this House, and that this conclusion is based on certain remarks or observations in the Select Committee report— majority as well as the minority report—and therefore he infers—to state more correctly—from these documents that the original Bill was never considered. That, in short, is the point of order. The question of breach of privilege or abuse of procedure will arise, if we come to the conclusion that the Select Committee did as he infers, but if we come to the conclusion that the Select Committee was not guilty in the manner in which he infers it to be, then the question of breach of privilege or abuse of procedure does not arise at all. I can assure honourable members that I have carefully gone through every point that the honourable member is going to read from the report of the Select Committee and, perhaps, something more also,