I stand corrected. He seems to think that this was more or less a a question of sensitiveness. On that point I am inclined to agree with him. After all, within the borders of the State the dignity of the Ruler has to be maintained and if you take away from him the power of dispensing justice which he had hitherto been enjoying that dignity is adversely affected, even within the orders of the State. In his Prom Statement of the 5th July, the Honourable Sardar Patel gave the assurance to the Princes that our common objective should be to understand each other’s point of view and to come to decisions acceptable to all and in the best interests of the country. In the light of this assurance, Sir, I venture to suggest that the framers of the draft should reconsider the entire position once more and see if a happy via media cannot be arrived at. The difficulty arises mainly in respect of one matter. The courts which will try the cases under the Federal Law will be the State Courts. The State Court convicts a person of an offence under the Federal Law and the conviction is upheld by the High Court of the State and then at the end of all this, an outside authority grants pardon. In such a case, there is going to be a certain amount of complexity and- a certain amount of uneasiness and-possibly clash. In order to avoid this, Sir, it seems to me desirable that the constitutional experts should put their heads together once more. I, for one, do not desire a settlement or decision on this matter which would leave any sense of unpleasantness or which would cause any misunderstandings specially because some of the speakers before me hinted or suggested from their speeches that there was certain amount of excitement in the matter. So far as offences under the ordinary law are concerned, the question of powers does not arise at all. The original draft took away even that power. Now the draft has been amended and it has been made clear that offences under the ordinary laws shall remain exclusive concern of the Rulers and the pardons under the ordinary laws of the land will remain the exclusive concern of the Rulers. But even this does not improve the position substantially. In the amended draft there is a clause which runs thus:
“Such power may also be conferred on other authorities by federal law.“