Oct, 25, A Reuter telegram has definite-lly intimated that the Report of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Government's proposals for Indian Constitutional Reform will be published simultaneously in England and India, towards the end of November, of shortly after the opening of the Jnew session, in which the relative legislation is expected to provide the most important discussions. In Jwinding up the affairs of the present session which Is to be resumed next Tuesday, the proce-Jdure for dealing with the Report Jwill be indicated by the Government. Thus the chain leading from' the present transitional con= tution in India to its successor is, being completed. It began by the inquiry carried out by the Simon JCommission as the result of two visits to India and extended hear-jings of evidence in both countries.
was continued by the publication Jof the Simon Report, by the three sessions of the Indian Round Table Conference (at the sec-jond of which Mr, M. K. Gandhi attended), and the issue in March, 1933, of the White Paper outlining the Government's proposals, A Joint Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament was set up to consider those proposals in consultation with Indian representatives and to report upon them. [After lengthy sittings and the compilation of a mountainous mass of levidence—Sir Samuel Hoare's own Jevidence occupied nineteen sittings jand filled a volume of 668 pages—{the Joint Committee which has been Ipresided over by the Marquis of Linlithgow, who a few years ago Jconducted a Commission of Inquiry {into Indian Agriculture, has now reached the threshold of agreement. Its Report will appear next month. Soon afterwards it is ex= pected that the Government's bill will be presented to the House of Commons for a first reading. The real debate will come on the second reading which is expected to be put down for an early date in 1935. More precise information jon that point will no doubt be Javailable next week when the Government's ideas on procedure Ihave been revealed.
The machinery thus used to bring this Indian legislation to the Istatute book is strictly in accord with precedent. It is more ela borate and has been more deli=
Iberate than that applied to. the Montford Constitution. This is [due to several causes. Experience Jgained in working the present sys-{tem in India has induced the Gov-
Jernment to consult Indian opinion lat every stage of the discussions, rather than to present Indian witnesses with a cut-and-dried Ischeme. The Simon Commission's desire that the new Constitution jsoould be of a permanent charac-iter and contain within itself the means of adaptation to the re-[quirements of the future, prompted the exercise of the greatest care in covering the whole of the immense ground involved. The—proposals themselves, too, are so far. reaching, so momentous and have so vital an importance to the Empire as a whole and to England land India in particular, that nothing but the most " sustained examination of the issues at stake would have been appropriate. It is not too much to say that the Indian Bill is a matter for the lively in-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.