RELEASING INDIAN PRISONERS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22336, 25 February 1938, Page 13

RELEASING INDIAN PRISONERS

MR GANDHI REPLIES TO VICEROY DUTIES OF GOVERNORS AND MINISTERS (USITED PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT.) (Received February 24, 8.16 p.m.) BOMBAY, February 24. “Lord Linlithgow’s statement is special pleading unworthy of a personage possessing unheard-of powers,” declared Mr Gandhi. The right of examining the cases of the political prisoners belonged to responsible Ministers, he said, while the governors’ duty was to advise their Ministers on questions of broad policy and warn them of the danger of ccnsequences—after which they should leave the Ministers free. He added that the Ministers would find difficulty in shouldering the responsibility unless the question was decided in their favour. Nevertheless, the Viceroy had left the door open for the governors to negotiate with the Ministers.

In his statement issued on Tuesday Lord Linlithgow said that the prisoners in Bihar and United Provinces, whose release was in dispute, were almost without exception persons convicted of violence or preparation for specific acts of violence. To have acquiesced in immediate and indiscriminate release would have been to strike a blow at the root of . law and order in India. There was no impropriety, he said, in the governors’ requiring individual examination or declining, without it, to accept the advice of their Ministers.