On 5th November 1948, Mr. Dr. P. S. Deshmukh [CP Berar General] at the Constituent Assembly spoke as follows:
“The speech delivered by my Honourable Friend, Dr. Ambedkar, was an excellent performance and it was an impressive commentary on the Draft, it has been presented. As is well known, he is an advocate of repute and I think he ably argued what was before him. He would perhaps have shaped The Constitution differently if he had the scope to do so. In any case, I think, he admitted his difficulties fully when he said that after all you cannot alter the administration in a day and if the present Constitution can be described in a nutshell, it is one intended to fit in with the present administration that is why there is nothing original and nothing striking, nothing to create any enthusiasm about it. It is to fit in with the administration left by the British in this Country. The Governors of Provinces are to be there; the administration in the Provinces is not to be disturbed. What has been disturbed is only a few name here and there. We are told that there will be a President of the Indian Republic. As a learned Doctor himself admitted, he has been metamorphosed into a fit-able figure head like the present King of England so the name of the President is merely a misnomer it is to be adopted because he have perhaps no other alternative and because we are not prepared to call the Head of our Executive by the name of King. And apart from that the enumeration of Fundamental Rights, we do not find any striking difference between this Constitution and Government of India Act, 1935. Elaborated in the way in which it was done by my Learned Friend, it looks perhaps more attractive that on an ultimate analysis it will be found to be the same as the Act of 1935 with a few changes here and there.”
Comment: We find that the Government of India Act, which came into existence almost 14 years prior to the Constitution still held sway on the latter.