There are good many admirable features of this Constitution to which attention has already been drawn by so many honourable Members and I do not think it necessary to refer to all of them. The enfranchisement of the entire adult population of the country is the biggest democratic step adopted in the Constitution. It may interest honourable Members of the House to be told that the number of people which this Constitution has enfranchised is almost equal to, if not more than, the entire population of Soviet Russia. This adult franchise undoubtedly represents the fulfilment of our long cherished and often declared intentions but its success in the context of present day unsettled state of things in the countryside is a matter which causes some doubt and anxiety. Fundamental rights constitute another glorious chapter in the Constitution. That these rights have been hedged in by many healthy restrictions does not at all undermine their efficacy; on the other hand they make the, rights all the more precious. Care has been taken to see that the rights guaranteed to the citizens do not degenerate into license to do anything one likes in the name of liberty of action miscalled ‘civil liberty’. Some friends have complained of the inadequacy of our fundamental rights. My honourable Friend Shri Lakshminarayan Sahu has even gone to the length of saying that civil rights enjoyed by people in the British regime have been curtailed by the present Constitution. I present to my friend Shri Sahuji and to others of his way of thinking a P.T.I. news item published in today’s Hindustan Times under the caption “Students be laboured Railway official.”
“Armed with daggers, iron rods and hockey sticks 40 students of a local English High School dragged out a travelling ticket examiner from a guard van at Ghusia Kalau railway station near here and be laboured him. The ticket examiner had charged some students for travelling without tickets in class I.”