Page:White Paper on Indian States (1950).pdf/126

 they formed part of the Provinces but actually form part of the Provinces. The Constitution also provides for the administration of the Khasi Hill States, to which reference has been made earlier, as part of Assam in accordance with the special provisions relating to tribal areas.

226. Centrally-administered States.—Proceeding on the lines of the Provincially-merged States, the new Constitution provides that the Centrally administered areas, which were governed by virtue of an order under Section 290A as if they were a Chief Commissioner's Province, will acquire the full status of Part C States (Chief Commissioners' States). Here again the territorial merger of the Centrally merged States has been completed with the enforcement of the new Constitution.  

227. "In determining a nation's rank in political civilisation", Henry Sidgwick has written, "no test is more decisive than the degree in which justice, as defined by the law, is actually realised in its judicial administration, both as between one citizen and another and as between a private citizen and a member of the Government". Indeed, the manner in which a State dispenses justice is the measure of its moral character and of its ability to ensure the sanctity of fundamental human rights. The mechanism of justice in a modern State involves an elaborate process; in this process details such as the qualifications of the men who are to administer justice in Courts, the way in which they are to perform their functions, the method by which they are to be selected, the terms on which they shall hold office, are as vitally important as the jurisdiction or the authority of the Courts and the machinery for the enforcement of their judgments and orders. On the nature of the mechanism of justice depends the application of the principle, summed up in the expression "the Rule of Law" which constitutes one of the fundamental legal safeguards enjoyed by citizens of progressive States.

228. The judicial systems of States, as they existed under British paramountcy, reflected the varying phases of their moral and material conditions and were very far from the standards of the institutions which guarantee the supremacy of the "Rule of Law".

In a large number of States, laws were not to be found recorded in any Code accessible to the people. Only in a limited number of States did there exist a recognised body of laws; the code of laws in such cases consisted generally of the British Indian laws adopted mutatis mutandis. 