GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 28 February 1935, Page 5

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

Need to Remove Apprehension of the Princes REDRAFTING PROPOSALS DISCUSSION IN COMMONS (British Official Wireless) Received 2 p.m. to-day.. RUGBY, Feb. 27. The Times,' referring to India Questions to-day, considers the apprehension of the princes, wherever they prove to be well-founded, must be removed and their views as to the redrafting of certain passages of the Bill'must be carefully studied before it takes final shape.

“It is, however, quite unnecessary,” says the Times, “to suppose that these modifications or elucidations will maka any fundamental change in the structure or intention of the Bill. In respect of the federal scheme itself, the princes still stand exactly where they stood before they accepted it on tho condition that their rights and sovereignty would not be impaired and the Government will be ready and always has been ready to safeguard tho position of the Indian states.” Discussion resumed in the House of Commons to-day of the Government amendments to Clause 6 of the India Bill dealing with the accession of the states to the federation. Sir Samuel Hoare explained that these amendments were not intended to meet.the crisis, nor were they the forerunners of. amendments designed to change the whole structure of the Bill. They were moved entirely on their merits. Turning to points raised by Mr. . Winston Churchill, Sir Samuel Hoaro said there could be no question of tho accession of the states to the federation on a limited liability system. It was contemplated that the items one to 45 now appearing in the list of 5G subjects reserved to the Federal legislature by the seventh schedule attached to the Bill would be the normal field over which tho states would surrender their powers. Those items covered a wide field of government. If a state attempted to make terms which would make its entry of little or no value to the federation, there must be power of refusing entry for that state. The states would be invited to accept the first 45 items in the federal list, but would be free to accept the remaining subjects if they wished. There would inevitably be some variation in the number of subjects accepted, or tho qualifications attached to acceptances within the list of 45 subjects, such as would arise from varying local conditions in the state. It would, however, rest with the Crown -to accept or reject the proposals for accession, and the House of Commons would in due course be in full possession of all the facts on which acceptance or rejection had been based.