248 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Pandit Mukut Bihari Lal Bhargava: There is one additional fact which has not come to the notice of the Chair. I wrote a letter to the Law Department to find out whether any re-drafted Bill was printed. The information given to me was that only a few copies were printed and they were available in the library of the House. I have referred to that Bill and it is a fact that a re-drafted Bill was printed in July 1948 prior to the meeting of the Select Committee. That Bill was considered clause by clause by the Select Committee and that is the Bill that has emerged from the Select Committee with its report. The report mentions this. Therefore my respectful submission is that that re-drafted Bill may be taken into consideration to find out whether the Select Committee applied its mind to the Bill that was referred to it or some other re-drafted Bill that was printed under the signature of Dr. Ambedkar, after scrutiny of the original Bill and absolutely in a different form. That is a very important material and additional fact which I respectfully bring to the notice of the Chair before the ruling is given.
Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava: I have got a copy of that Bill with me.
Mr. Speaker: I have some facts which honourable members do not have.
The Point of Order that the Honourable the Law Minister’s motion for consideration of the Select Committee Report on Hindu Code is incompetent as raised by the honourable member Mr. Naziruddin and supported by a few other members on 31st August 1948, is based on a narrow limit of facts. The objection raised is presented as a chain of reasoning in the following form :
“What the Select Committee considered was a ‘substitute’ of the original Bill in the form of ‘a revised draft’. Therefore the Select Committee did not consider the Bill referred to it, but ‘a new document’, and the present report of the Select Committee, being a report on a new document, there is no Select Committee Report on the original Bill. The Honourable the Law Minister’s motion for consideration of the Bill, as it emerged from the Select Committee, is, therefore, incompetent”. That is the substance of the Point of Order. ( Shri Mahavir Tyagi: “Is that your ruling ?”) I believe I have stated the point correctly.
None of the members, Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad, Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava and Srijut Biswanath Das, who raised or supported the Point