Amit Charui

The constitution of India was first drafted by Motilal Nehru in 1928. The legislatures that the British had introduced were weak and the voting rights were not given to everyone. The Indian law makers had learnt from experiences during the colonial rule and utilized all of this while writing the constitution. Many of the institutional details and procedures were borrowed from colonial laws like, the government of India Act 1935. The values of the French revolution, The practise of parliamentary democracy in Britain, the bill of rights in US and also the socialist revolution in Russia. The system of social and economic equality in the Indian constitution was inspired by the socialist revolution in Russia. The drafting of the constitution was done by the Constituent Assembly which originally had 389 members. The numbers came down to 239 members after the partition known as the Constituent Assembly. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, was the chairman of the drafting committee and Dr. Rajendra Prasad was chairman of the Constituent Assembly. Our constitution was adopted on 26th November, 1949. This came into effect on 26th January, 1950 which we commemorate as our Republic Day. The debates during formation of the constitution were recorded in the ‘constitutional assembly debates’.