NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 131 of 150

Correct — C, B. N. Rau and S. N. Mukherjee. Benegal Narsing Rau entered the Indian Civil Service in 1910 and was appointed Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly in 1946; he toured the United States, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom to consult constitutional experts and judges, and he prepared the original rough draft that the Drafting Committee then worked on. S. N. Mukherjee was Joint Secretary of the Constituent Assembly and its Chief Draftsman, the officer who turned the Assembly's decisions into the actual clauses of the text. Both were officials rather than members, which is exactly what the stem means by civil servants. Dr Ambedkar acknowledged both by name in his closing speech to the Assembly, crediting Rau with the rough draft and saying of Mukherjee that his ability to put the most intricate proposals into the simplest and clearest legal form could rarely be equalled.

• (a)B. N. Rau and K. M. Munshi — Rau belongs, but K. M. Munshi does not. Munshi was a lawyer, a Congress politician and a founder of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, and he sat on the Drafting Committee as an elected member of the Assembly, not as an official serving it.
• (b)S. N. Mukherjee and Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar — Mukherjee belongs, but Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar was the Advocate-General of Madras and a member of the Drafting Committee — a distinguished lawyer and a member of the Assembly, again not a civil servant assisting it.
• (d)K. M. Munshi and Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar — Both were members of the seven-man Drafting Committee, and neither was an official. This pair contains no civil servant at all, and is the option a candidate reaches for on brand recognition alone.

The Constituent Assembly worked through elected members organised into committees, but it ran on a permanent secretariat of officials who never voted. The Assembly's own President was Dr Rajendra Prasad; the Drafting Committee was chaired by Dr B. R. Ambedkar and included Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, K. M. Munshi, N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Syed Mohammad Saadulla, N. Madhava Rau and T. T. Krishnamachari. Alongside them sat the Constitutional Adviser, B. N. Rau, and the Chief Draftsman, S. N. Mukherjee. The distinction the question turns on is membership against officialdom, not eminence.

Two of the four names in this option set are members and two are officials, and the whole item is a test of that one boundary. Sort the four names into the two boxes before looking at the options and the answer falls out. It is also worth knowing what happened to Rau afterwards, because it makes him easy to remember: he went on to be a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The item's four-name design is the standard trap of this topic — the famous constitutional lawyers are the ones a candidate recalls first, and they are precisely the ones being excluded.

• B. N. Rau joined the Indian Civil Service in 1910 and was Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly from 1946.
• Rau prepared the original rough draft of the Constitution, which the Drafting Committee then worked on.
• S. N. Mukherjee was Joint Secretary of the Constituent Assembly and its Chief Draftsman.
• Ambedkar credited both men by name in his closing speech, praising Mukherjee's skill at reducing intricate proposals to clear legal form.
• K. M. Munshi and Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar were members of the seven-man Drafting Committee, not officials.

• Treating any famous constitutional lawyer as a civil servant — Munshi and Ayyar were elected members.
• Confusing B. N. Rau with B. R. Ambedkar's role; Rau drafted, the Drafting Committee revised and Ambedkar piloted the text.
• Forgetting S. N. Mukherjee altogether, since the Chief Draftsman is rarely named in short notes.

NDA asks who held a named office in the Assembly, or pairs four persons against four committees or posts.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly?

  • (a)Dr Rajendra Prasad
  • (b)Dr B. R. Ambedkar
  • (c)Jawaharlal Nehru
  • (d)Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar

  Answer(b) Dr B. R. Ambedkar — Rajendra Prasad presided over the Assembly itself.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  B. N. Rau, Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly, was later appointed

  • (a)Chief Justice of India
  • (b)Attorney-General for India
  • (c)a judge of the International Court of Justice
  • (d)the first Comptroller and Auditor General

  Answer(c) a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague.