When Congress, Akali Dal were allies

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 5

With time, political affiliations in Punjab have changed, but perhaps governance hasn’t. The Congress and the Akali Dal were coalition partners in the Punjab Provincial Assembly governed by the Unionist Party in 1946-47. Seven decades later, the two are political opponents. 

The state of finances and schools in the 175 constituencies – from Attock (now in Pakistan) to Gurgaon (Haryana) — were just the same as present.

It may only be in 2009 that the Punjab Government had passed an order, saying that the minimum education qualification of clerks to be recruited by the government should be graduation. However, in 1940, 225 clerks recruited for the higher and district judiciary by the then government headed by Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan were all graduates.

Facts like these have been revealed in 43 volumes of documents – transcripts of all debates that took place in the Provincial Assembly between 1935 and 1947 brought from across the border (Punjab Assembly in Lahore). The transcripts were handed over to the Vidhan Sabha Speaker Rana KP today.

The men behind “arranging” this valuable slice of history from Lahore, Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal and IAS officer RK Kaushik will also be giving copies of these volumes to the Haryana Vidhan Sabha and Panjab University.

Interestingly, after the Pakistan Government officially declined to hand over copies of these documents to Manpreet, an ardent student of British Indian history, he and Kaushik then sought the help of “friends” in Pakistan to “unofficially” get copies of the transcripts.

A small part of the 66-km journey between Lahore and Amritsar was also made on mules! As Manpreet waited anxiously, these volumes cleared the customs on both sides and finally landed here. “With these volumes now being a property of the Vidhan Sabha, Punjab gets important documents related to its pre-independence history, which will be an important source of information for research by historians,” said Manpreet.

Row over martyr’s hanging

An interesting debate in these transcripts, dates back to March 24, 1931, when Sir Mohan Lal of the Congress asked a question from the then Governor Sir Geffory Montmorency regarding the execution of Bhagat Singh. The reply was given by a Home member, Sir Alexander Craig, who admitted that Bhagat Singh was executed at night before the time assigned for his execution and how his body was taken away in a truck guarded by the Army to Ganda Singh Wala village. These documents also reveal a rather limited role of the Muslim League in the Provincial Assembly. The Muslim League had just two members between 1937 and 1946. But in the second Assembly that assumed office in 1946, it had 55 members.