Session on Making of Indian Constitution

IISU NDLI Club in association with Department of Library and Information Science and Department of Political Science organised a Constitution reading session “Revisiting the Indian Constitution” on 17th March, 2023 as a part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsava.

The resource person was Dr Deepshikha Parashar who gave an overview about the Constitution of India. She informed that the document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental rights, directive principles, and the duties of citizens.
Dr Deepshikha shared information about making of Constitution of India .She narrated the series of events that exists behind the formation of the Constitution of India. In 1934 the seed of forming a Constituent Assembly was first sown by an Indian pioneer of the Communist movement, Mr. M.N. Roy. Followed by this, it was the Indian National Congress whose demand for forming a Constituent Assembly to give shape to the Constitution of India took the center stage in 1935. Though this demand was accepted by the British Government in 1940, the draft proposal that was sent over by the Government to India with Sir Stafford Cripps did not receive a warm welcome from the Muslim League. It was finally the Cabinet Mission that put forth the idea of the Constituent Assembly which marked the beginning of formulating the Indian Constitution thereby creating history. The supreme law of democratic India was drafted by the Assembly from 1946 to 1950 and was finally adopted on 26th November 1949 with effect from 26th January 1950 which has been celebrated as the Republic Day of India.

The entire process of making a constitution was illustrated by Ma’am Deepshikha through her lecture .She made it clear that drafting a constitution for Independent India was not an easy task. How the drafts were created and put in front of the assembly for discussion and through a number of amendments it was approved by all members of the constituent assembly. The Constituent Assembly had precisely taken two years, eleven months, and seventeen days to complete the historic duty of drafting the Indian Constitution. During this period, the Assembly held eleven sessions spread over 165 days, among which 114 days were spent solely on consideration of the Draft Constitution. The final draft was signed by all the members of Constituent assembly. After Dr Deepshikha took the attendees to library where students saw and read the copy of constitution which the institution had.