104 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
form part of the regular Army. As the Act principally applies to the regular Army, it is necessary to provide for an eventuality where the provisions of this Act would have to be extended and applied to units which are not part of the regular Army. That is the purpose of section 4. Section 4 says........
Pandit Kunzru : Are these Forces Part B States Forces ?
Dr. Ambedkar : I am coming separately to Part B States. So far as section 4 seeks to apply the provisions of this Act to units for the moment other than those referring to Part B States, I do not see that there can be any valid objection to the provisions contained in that particular section.
With regard to section 5 which deals with Part B States, my hon. Friend’s contention was that this was inappropriate, and also the latter part of section 4 which made mention of Part B States. The answer to that question is this. My hon. Friend will remember that in the earlier part of the Constituent Assembly, the position was that the States in Part B which were then called Acceding States, had been given power to raise and to maintain independent Forces of their own. If he has got a copy of the original draft of the Constitution, he will see item 4 on page 189 and he will also find that I took objection to that provision. I did not want that any particular unit under the Union should have a right to raise and to maintain troops. I was glad that my contention prevailed, and that part of the entry was deleted. So that, the right to raise and maintain troops under the Constitution exclusively belongs to the Union. Although this position was accepted, it did not remove altogether the difficulty.
As my hon. Friend well knows, there were certain covenants that were entered into between the Government of India and the various Indian States mentioned in Part B. One of the terms of the covenant was that the States which had certain Forces maintained and raised by them should be continued to be maintained by them and that what should be prevented was the raising of new troops. The existing units were to be continued. Then arose the question what is to happen to the existing units : were they to be independent