1124 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Bill is not pressed so far. It is now confined only to the part relating to marriage and divorce. There is enough time for hon. Members to consider when another Bill comes as to how it will affect agricultural land. Today we need not dilate upon that matter. Whatever might have been the change due to the agricultural lands being put in the Concurrent List, we are not concerned with that now.
Pandit Malaviya : Sir, I will obey your ruling or decision. But I wish to submit for your consideration what I have to say and I will do as you will direct me. If at any time any Bill including the clauses relating to agricultural property comes up, then of course, it will be time for us to discuss the details of the clauses of that Bill and to express our opinions upon them. But at this stage, as you have stated, Sir, I am not trying to express any opinion whatever upon the question of the landed property in this country, or the methods of its disposition. I am not speaking on that subject. But what I wish to bring out is about the scope of the bill itself. Whatever may be its provisions, whether it is marriage, whether it is death, or whether it is anything else, it will somehow apply itself to all. I am trying to show with whom the provisions will come into compact. For instance, just before you returned to the Chair, I was arguing that the States in which the Bill had not been published should not be put under this Bill straightway, and there should at least be a provision that only after it has been published in the respective States should the respective legislatures be asked to decide upon it. Similarly, I beg to submit that what I was arguing was not the question of any landed property or any other property as such, but the nature of the applicability, the nature of the thing, what this Bill or any Bill of this nature, can now comprehend as against what it could comprehend before. Therefore, I shall confine myself to that aspect of the matter and not go into the question of property at all.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : The hon. Member has taken two hours and we have some other work also to do. I thought the hon. Member was concluding and I was anxious to call upon the hon. Law Minister to speak. Now, may I know how long the hon. Member is likely to take ? I may adjourn the half-an-hour discussion to some other day, if the hon. Member is likely to finish soon. We have another fifteen minutes left now.