Which Act provided for the partition of India into two new dominions - India and Pakistan?

Question

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Correct — C, Indian Independence Act, 1947. The Commission's own note on this question says the Act created two separate states, India and Pakistan, which became independent simultaneously, and cites R. C. Agarwal's Constitutional Development and National Movement (S. Chand, 2010, p. 316). The statute says so in its own opening words: its long title is 'An Act to make provision for the setting up in India of two independent Dominions, to substitute other provisions for certain provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935, which apply outside those dominions, and to provide for other matters consequential on or connected with the setting up of those Dominions.' It was carried through the House of Commons on 15 July 1947, consented to by the Lords the next day, received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947 and took effect on 15 August 1947. It gave statutory form to the 3 June Plan of 1947 — Mountbatten's plan — accepted by the Congress through Nehru, Patel and Kripalani, by the Muslim League through Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar, and for the Sikhs by Baldev Singh, after Attlee had announced on 20 February 1947 that Britain would transfer power by June 1948 at the latest. What the Act actually did is a checklist worth memorising: it set up the two dominions from 15 August 1947; partitioned Bengal and Punjab; established a Governor-General in each dominion as the Crown's representative, allowing the same person to hold both offices; conferred complete legislative authority on the two Constituent Assemblies; terminated British suzerainty over the princely states, so that all treaties and obligations lapsed and each state chose a dominion; abolished the office of Secretary of State for India; and ended the title Emperor of India, which George VI formally gave up by proclamation on 22 June 1948. Boundaries were left to a commission appointed by the Governor-General — Sir Cyril Radcliffe's — with referenda deciding the North-West Frontier Province and Sylhet. Until the two dominions wrote their own constitutions they continued to be governed by the Government of India Act 1935 as modified by this Act, which is why India's Constitution, adopted in 1950, had to repeal the Indian Independence Act expressly, in Article 395.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) It divided subjects, not territory. The Montagu-Chelmsford Act, which received Royal Assent on 23 December 1919, introduced diarchy in the major provinces — reserved subjects such as law and order, finance, land revenue and police kept with the British Governor, transferred subjects such as education, health and local self-government given to Indian ministers — set up a bicameral central legislature and the first Public Service Commission, and promised a statutory review after ten years, the clause that produced the Simon Commission. Nothing in it touches the map.  (b) The intelligent wrong answer, on two counts. It really did detach territory — Burma and Aden were made separate Crown colonies under its scheme — and it really did survive independence, because a version of it modified by the 1947 Act went on governing both dominions until they adopted their own constitutions in 1950 and 1956. But it partitioned nothing between Indians: it abolished provincial diarchy, granted provincial autonomy, introduced diarchy at the Centre, divided powers into Federal, Provincial and Concurrent Lists, created the Federal Court and the Reserve Bank of India, and proposed an All-India Federation that never came into being because the princes would not accede. It reorganised a single empire; it did not end it.  (d) A statistically tempting option that is simply false here, since the correct statute is printed immediately above it. Worth knowing how this paper uses it: across the 150 questions of this booklet 'None of the above' (or 'None of these') is offered eight times and is the correct answer on four of them — Q22, Q40, Q84 and Q85 — so on this paper it is the key on exactly half the questions that offer it, and treating it as an automatic throwaway is a costly habit. Choosing it here means rejecting a correct answer that is on the page.

Concept: British constitutional legislation for India runs as a ladder, and each rung has one job — knowing which job belongs to which rung answers most questions in this family. The Government of India Act 1858 transferred rule from the East India Company to the Crown. The Indian Councils Acts of 1861, 1892 and 1909 admitted Indians in slowly widening numbers to legislative councils, with 1909 introducing separate electorates. The Government of India Act 1919 divided provincial subjects into reserved and transferred and called that diarchy. The Government of India Act 1935 was the largest of them all — the Bill ran to 473 clauses and 16 schedules and its debates filled some 4,000 pages of Hansard — and it moved from dividing subjects to dividing powers, with three legislative lists, provincial autonomy, a Federal Court and a federation that never happened. Only the last rung, the Indian Independence Act 1947, transfers sovereignty, and it does so in a peculiar two-layer way that students routinely miss: it did not write a constitution for India. It created two dominions, made each Constituent Assembly a fully sovereign legislature free to write whatever constitution it chose, and in the meantime left the amended 1935 Act running as the interim constitution. India lived under the Government of India Act 1935 for two years and five months after independence, until 26 January 1950. That is why the federal scheme in the Seventh Schedule descends from 1935 while independence itself descends from 1947.

State PCS 2025 Q80 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q80 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer