Select the correct statements from the following.
A. The Constituent Assembly was constituted in November, 1946 under the Cabinet Mission Plan.
B. Cabinet Mission rejected the idea of two Constituent

Question

Select the correct statements from the following.
A. The Constituent Assembly was constituted in November, 1946 under the Cabinet Mission Plan.
B. Cabinet Mission rejected the idea of two Constituent Assemblies.
C. The Cripps Proposal was accepted by the Muslim League.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), 'Only A, B'. The Cabinet Mission arrived in India in March 1946 and put forward its plan in May 1946, providing for elections to a Constituent Assembly by the existing provincial legislatures; those elections were held in July 1946 and the Assembly stood constituted in November 1946 on that basis, ahead of its first sitting on 9 December 1946. Statement A records exactly this and is correct. On the demand from the Muslim League for a separate Constituent Assembly for the Muslim-majority provinces — in effect, for Pakistan — the Cabinet Mission's plan explicitly rejected the idea of two Constituent Assemblies. Instead it proposed a single Assembly for all of British India, with provinces grouped into three sections (A, B and C) that would settle their own provincial and group constitutions before coming together at the Union level, a compromise designed to hold unity together without a formal partition of the constitution-making process itself. Statement B records this rejection and is correct. Statement C is the one that fails: the Cripps Proposals of March 1942, brought by Sir Stafford Cripps to secure Indian cooperation in the war effort, were rejected by both major parties — the Indian National Congress rejected them for offering Dominion Status rather than full independence and for the provincial right of secession that threatened India's unity, and the Muslim League rejected them because the proposals stopped short of an explicit, unconditional commitment to Pakistan. The Cripps Mission's failure was total, not partial, so statement C is false, and only A and B survive together.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Correctly keeps the Cabinet Mission's rejection of two Constituent Assemblies but wrongly credits the Muslim League with accepting the Cripps Proposals of 1942 and wrongly drops the Assembly's November 1946 constitution. The Cripps Mission failed with both major parties — the Muslim League rejected it precisely because it did not concede Pakistan outright, not because it accepted it.  (c) Correctly keeps the Assembly's constitution in November 1946 but wrongly credits Muslim League acceptance of the Cripps Proposals and wrongly drops the Cabinet Mission's rejection of two separate Constituent Assemblies — which is one of the Mission's best-documented and most consequential decisions, since it is exactly what kept constitution-making formally unified even as political unity was collapsing.  (d) Requires the false Cripps statement to be true alongside the two genuine facts. An inclusive option like this fails the moment a single listed item is wrong, and statement C is wrong: the Cripps Proposals of 1942 were rejected by both Congress and the Muslim League, not accepted by either.

Concept: Two separate British missions sit behind this question, four years apart, and telling them apart is the whole task. The Cripps Mission of March 1942, led by Sir Stafford Cripps, offered a post-war Constituent Assembly and Dominion Status with a right of provincial secession, in exchange for wartime cooperation; both Congress and the Muslim League rejected it, and its failure fed directly into the Quit India movement of August 1942. The Cabinet Mission of 1946 — sent after the war, once Britain had committed to transferring power — proposed the actual mechanism by which India's Constituent Assembly was formed: elections by the provincial legislatures in July 1946, a single Assembly (not two) with provinces grouped into three sections, and the Assembly's consequent constitution in November 1946, ahead of its first sitting in December that year.

State PCS 2025 Q83 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q83 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer