Page:Report of the Bengal Boundary Commission (Radcliffe Award).pdf/8

1066 1. Mr. Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, and

2. Mr. Justice Teja Singh.

I was subsequently appointed Chairman of this Commission.

3. The terms of reference of the Commission, as set out in the announcement, were as follows:—

We were desired to arrive at a decision as soon as possible before the 15th of August.

4. After preliminary meetings, the Commission invited the submission of memoranda and representations by interested parties. Numerous memoranda and representations were received.

5. The public sittings of the Commission took place at Lahore, and extended from Monday the 21st of July 1947, to Thursday the 31st of July 1947, inclusive, with the exception of Sunday, the 27th of July. The main arguments were conducted by counsel on behalf of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the Sikh members of the Punjab Legislative Assembly; but a number of other interested parties appeared and argued before the Commission. In view of the fact that I was acting also as Chairman of the Bengal Boundary Commission, whose proceedings were taking place simultaneously with the proceedings of the Punjab Boundary Commission, I did not attend the public sittings in person, but made arrangements to study daily the record of the proceedings and of all material submitted for our consideration.

6. After the close of the public sittings, the Commission adjourned to Simla where I joined my colleagues, and we entered upon discussions in the hope of being able to present an agreed decision as to the demarcation of the boundaries. I am greatly indebted to my colleagues for indispensable assistance in the clarification of the issues and the marshalling of the arguments for different views, but it became evident in the course of our discussions that the divergence of opinion between my colleagues was so wide that an agreed solution of the boundary problem was not to be obtained. I do not intend to convey by this that there were not large areas of the Punjab on the west and on the east respectively which provoked no controversy as to which State they should be assigned to; but when it came to the extensive but disputed areas in which the boundary must be drawn, differences of opinion as to the significance of the term "other factors", which we were directed by our terms of reference to take into account, and as to the weight and value to be attached to those factors, made it impossible to arrive at any agreed line. In those circumstances my colleagues, at the close of our discussions, assented to the conclusion that I must proceed to give my own decision.

7. This I now proceed to do. The demarcation of the boundary line is described in detail in the schedule which forms Annexure A to this award, and in the map attached thereto, Annexure B. The map is annexed for