270 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the moffusil Untouchable voters in hundreds of villages were not allowed to go to the Polling stations. In Nagpur a Police Officer became so much of a partisan of the Congress that he fired without the permission of the Magistrate on a crowd of Untouchable voters just to frightern them away. There were innumerable such cases all over India.
- If the Cabinet Mission had taken into account these circumstances they would have realized that the success of the Congress at the elections was due to purely advantageous circumstances. The results of the elections held under such circumstances should not have been taken as a justification for not giving separate representation to the Untouchables in the Constituent Assembly.
How the Mission adopted a false criterion for its decision.
- The criterion adopted by the Mission to decide whether the Congress did or did not represent the Untouchables was how many seats reserved for Untouchables were won by the Congress in the Final Election. This criterion was a false criterion because the results of the final elections are beyond the control of the Untouchables. Under the Poona Pact the final elections are determined by the Hindu votes. The true criterion which the Mission should have adopted was to find out how the Untouchables voted, how many votes were cast in favour of the Congress and how many against the Congress. This can be judged from the results of the Primary elections only and not from the results of the Final elections. For in the Primary election only the Untouchables vote. If the results of the Primary elections are taken as a basis, the decision of the Cabinet Mission, would be found to be absurd and contrary to facts. For only 28 per cent of the votes polled in the Primary elections were cast in favour of the Congress and
72 per cent against it.
- It is said if the Untouchables felt that they were not in the Congress they should have had a Primary election for every one of the 151 seats reserved for them. As a matter of fact, there were Primary elections for 43 seats only all throughout India. Why did the Untouchables not stage a Primary election for the rest of the 108 seats ?