Mr. President, I shall, by your leave, say a few words with respect to clause (3) of this article. I do not propose to repeat what I said on an earlier occasion when we were discussing the corresponding clause relating to the privileges of members of the Central Parliament. But I should like to invite the attention of Dr.Ambedkar and also of the House to the reaction among the people as well as in the Press to the clause that we adopted on that occasion. I have no doubt in my own mind that Dr.Ambedkar keeps his eyes and ears open, and cares to read some of the important papers daily or at least has them read to him daily. Soon after this clause relating to the privileges of members of Parliament was adopted in this House, most of the Press was critical of the way in which we had dealt with the matter. Even a Conservative Paper such as the Hindustan Times remarked that it was highly undesirable for us, drafting a written Constitution for our country, to legislate or to insert something in our constitution by reference to something in the unwritten constitution of another country. Britain, as the House is aware, has an unwritten Constitution though this particular measure may be written down in some document. I believe that when that clause was adopted, our Constitutional pandits here, our experts, our experts, Dr. Ambedkar, Mr. Alladi and others of their way of thinking laid the flattering unaction to their souls that, the House of Commons being the Mother of Parliaments, we were doing the wisest thing in the world by stating something with reference to that body, the House of Commons, about which however most of us here are blissfully ignorant. Many of the Members here who spoke on that occasion remarked that they did not know what the privileges of the Members of the House of Commons were, and some of the papers and some of the comments on this particular aspect of our work was that the Drafting Committee more or less shirked, “scamped”, its work. They could have at least drafted a schedule and incorporated it at the end of the Constitution to show what the privileges of the members of the House of Commons were. That was not done, and simply a clause was inserted that the privileges obtaining there will obtain here as well. Nobody knows what those are, and afortiori nobody knows what privileges we will have. Our Parliament presided over by Mr. Mavalankar has adopted certain rules of business and procedure tentatively, and has also appointment or is shortly going to appoint a Committee of Privileges. I wonder why we could not have very usefully and wisely adopted in our Constitution something to this effect, that whatever privileges we enjoy as members of the Central Parliament will be enjoyed by members of the Legislature in the States. If at all there was a need for reference to any other Constitution, I think it was very unwise on the part of the Drafting Committee to refer to an unwritten Constitution, viz., the Constitution of Great Britain. There is the written Constitution of the U.S.A., and some of us are proud of the fact that we have borrowed very much from the American Constitution. May I ask Dr. Ambedkar whether the Privileges of the Members of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom are in any way superior to or better than the privileges of the members of the House of Representatives of the United States? If they are, I should like to have enlightenment on that point. If they are not, I think the reference to an unwritten constitution is not at all desirable. I am of course against any reference to another constitution. If necessary let us put in a schedule to our constitution, and say here in this article that the privileges and rights are as specified in the Schedule at the end. There is probably a desire to simplify matters, but to simplify matters is not always the proper way. If they wanted to simplify it for the sake of brevity, they should have thought of this alternative-a reference to a written constitution of some country in the world. That would not have been absolutely repugnant to me. But I would any day prefer a definite schedule in the Constitution showing what privileges shall be enjoyed by members of the Legislatures and of Parliament. This particular clause, to my mind, should be recast. We have passed one clause on an earlier occasion, but that is no reason why we should perpetrate the same mistake over and over again. I would, therefore beg of Dr. Ambedkar and his wise team of the Drafting Committee and the House to revise this clause, and if necessary, to go back to the other clause, if they are convinced of the wisdom of this course, and revise that also accordingly and proceed in a saner and a wiser manner.
