710 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Constituent Assembly it was necessary to bring together, for the purpose of seeking the best advice possible on the matter of making the Constitution, persons who were qualified to give their advice on such an important matter, and it was felt not desirable to have this limitation being imposed on the membership of the Constituent Assembly, and what happened was that consequently the Government of India Act had to be adapted to make it suitable to the new circumstances, and this provision was dropped from the adapted Government of India Act, 1935. Consequently it was open for any Member to become a Member of the Constituent Assembly and, as the House also knows, as the Constituent Assembly also operated and functioned as the Dominion Legislature it became open for persons, even though they were holding an office of profit, to continue as Members of Parliament.
That being the position what happened was this, that certain Members who were Members of the Constituent Assembly and who on account of the fact that they were Members of the Constituent Assembly were also Members of the Dominition Legislature continued to hold offices of profit without any kind of Constitutional ban being imposed upon them, and once they were holders of offices of profit under the adapted Government of India Act, 1935, they continued to hold those offices even after the Constitution has come into operation on the 26th January 1950. Of course it was possible for Government to inform those Members that now that the law is changed and an office of profit has become a disqualification, it was in their interest to relinquish those offices which put them under this ban. But, obviously, Members of Parliament would realise that that would have created a great deal of administrative difficulty. Members had already taken upon themselves certain responsibilities as members of commissions and members of committees, and to ‘ be told in the midst of their work that they must now quit and the committee or commissions must be so reconstituted that every member of those bodies was free from this ban, would have created a great deal of difficulty from the point of view of administration. Consequently they were permitted to continue to function in their offices notwithstanding the