The Calcutta Weekly Notes February 13 1950

In the long prOcess by which the Goernment of India Act of 1935 was framed people in Britain learned much of the difficulties of making a Constitution for India and anyone who followed the dicussions of these years in which Indians and British alike strove to devise a good Government for India will be slow to criticise the work which the Indian Consttuent Assembly has done. [...] Perhaps the first point which interests a British student of the Indian Constitution is the fact that the Constituent Assembly should have chosen the Parliamentary form of executive—the cabinet system as undestood in British countries—in preference to the non-Parliamentary or Presidential form of executive which prevails in the United States. [...] Undoubtedly British students of Government will follow the working of the Cabinet system both at the centre and in the states of the Indian Union with the greatest interest and sympathy. [...] Since it is intended that the residual powers in the Union should rest with the centre why is it necessary to do more than enumerate the powers of the States and the concurrent powers and then to say that all that is left rests with the Centre? [...] FEDERAL FEATURES ' On the whole it seems evident that the Constituent Assembly intends*the Union to be more centralised than was proposed by the Act of 1935 although in that case also there were methods of intervention pemitted to the Centre in the affairs of the provinces which reminded one more of the Canadian conception of federation than DI the United States one.