Making of the Indian Constitution & the Constituent Assembly

By Dooit UPSC expert · 3 September 2026 · 12 min read

In thirty years of mentoring aspirants I have seen one chapter reward serious study more reliably than almost any other in Polity: the making of the Constitution. It is small, it is entirely learnable, and both Prelims and Mains return to it year after year. Master it early and you build the frame on which every other Polity topic hangs.

Most beginners skim this chapter because it "looks like history". That is a costly instinct. The Constituent Assembly is where the ideas behind Fundamental Rights, the Directive Principles, federalism and the parliamentary system were argued into shape. If you understand who made these choices and why, the rest of Laxmikanth stops feeling like a list of Articles to cram and starts reading like a story with a logic of its own. Let me walk you through it the way I would in a classroom — facts first, then the judgement UPSC is really testing.

The long road to an Assembly

The idea of Indians framing their own Constitution did not appear suddenly in 1946. It was demanded, resisted and half-conceded over a full decade. The philosophical demand for a Constituent Assembly was first raised in a concrete form by M. N. Roy in 1934. The Indian National Congress made it an official demand in 1935, and by 1938 Jawaharlal Nehru had declared that free India's Constitution must be framed by a Constituent Assembly elected on adult franchise, without outside interference.

The British conceded the principle grudgingly. The August Offer of 1940 accepted, for the first time, that Indians should frame their own Constitution. The Cripps Mission of 1942 proposed a constitution-making body after the war but was rejected. It was finally the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 that laid down the practical scheme under which the Constituent Assembly was actually constituted. Remember this sequence — Prelims loves to scramble these four milestones and ask you to place them in order.

How the Assembly was composed

Under the Cabinet Mission Plan the total strength of the Assembly was fixed at 389. Of these, 296 seats were allotted to British India and 93 to the princely states. The provincial seats were distributed among the three principal communities — General, Muslim and Sikh — roughly in proportion to their population. Members from the provinces were indirectly elected by the members of the provincial legislative assemblies, who themselves had been chosen on a limited franchise. This is an important nuance: the Assembly was not directly elected by the people on universal adult suffrage, and critics later seized on this.

After Partition and the withdrawal of members allotted to the territory that became Pakistan, the effective strength of the Assembly fell to 299. Keep these two numbers — 389 before, 299 after — clearly separated in your notes, because a favourite Prelims trap is to swap them.

The first sitting and the key personalities

The Constituent Assembly held its first sitting on 9 December 1946. The Muslim League boycotted it and pressed for a separate Pakistan, so only 211 members attended. Following the French practice, the oldest member, Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha, was elected temporary President of the Assembly. Two days later, on 11 December 1946, Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected the permanent President, a post he held throughout.

Fix the cast of characters firmly, because examiners test them constantly:

• Dr. Rajendra Prasad — President of the Constituent Assembly.
• Dr. B. R. Ambedkar — Chairman of the Drafting Committee; the chief architect of the Constitution.
• Sir B. N. Rau — the constitutional adviser to the Assembly, who prepared the original draft.
• H. V. R. Iyengar — Secretary to the Assembly.
• Prem Behari Narain Raizada — the calligrapher who hand-wrote the original manuscript in a flowing italic style.

A distinction I insist my students never blur: B. N. Rau prepared the draft; Ambedkar's committee scrutinised and defended it. Both are correct answers to different questions, and UPSC has exploited that confusion in the past.

The Objectives Resolution — the soul of the document

On 13 December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the historic Objectives Resolution, which laid down the fundamental philosophy and guiding principles of the constitution-making exercise. It resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, independent republic; to secure to all its citizens justice, liberty and equality; and to provide adequate safeguards for minorities and depressed classes. The Assembly adopted it on 22 January 1947.

Why does this matter so much? Because the Objectives Resolution was, in modified form, the basis of the Preamble. When a Mains question asks you to describe "the philosophy of the Constitution", the honest starting point is this resolution. It is the single thread that connects the making of the Constitution to the Preamble you will study next — if you want to see how that thread continues, read our companion piece on the Preamble of the Indian Constitution.

The committee system — how the work was actually done

An Assembly of nearly three hundred members cannot draft a Constitution in a plenary hall. The real work was delegated to more than a dozen committees — some dealing with substantive matters, others with procedure. You do not need every committee, but you must know the major ones and their chairmen cold, because this is prime Prelims territory.

Notice how the load was shared between three towering figures — Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar. A common Mains-worthy observation is that this was collaborative statecraft: no single person "wrote" the Constitution, though Ambedkar's role in steering the draft through debate earned him the title of chief architect.

The Drafting Committee

The most important of all was the Drafting Committee, set up on 29 August 1947, with seven members under the chairmanship of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Its task was to prepare a draft Constitution on the basis of B. N. Rau's initial text and the decisions of the various committees. The committee scrutinised the draft, considered thousands of amendments, and defended each provision on the floor of the House.

The seven members were: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Chairman), N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, Dr. K. M. Munshi, Syed Mohammad Saadulla, N. Madhava Rau (who replaced B. L. Mitter), and T. T. Krishnamachari (who replaced D. P. Khaitan). You are unlikely to be asked all seven, but the chairman and the "replacement" pairs occasionally surface, so a single reading fixes them.

The timeline of framing

From first sitting to adoption, the Assembly took 2 years, 11 months and 18 days, meeting across eleven sessions. It sat for 165 days in all. The Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949 — a date now celebrated as Constitution Day (Samvidhan Divas) — and it came fully into force on 26 January 1950. That final date was deliberately chosen: 26 January had been observed as Purna Swaraj Day since 1930, when the Congress first pledged complete independence.

Note the phrase "at commencement". The original Constitution of 1950 had 395 Articles in 22 Parts and 8 Schedules. Decades of amendments have since raised these numbers, so if a question specifies the original document, these are your figures — do not quote today's larger count for 1950.

Borrowed yet original — the sources of the Constitution

One of the most frequently examined ideas is that our framers borrowed liberally from other constitutions and then adapted each feature to Indian conditions. This is not plagiarism; it is prudence. Dr. Ambedkar himself defended it, arguing there was nothing to be ashamed of in borrowing what had already been tested elsewhere. A working table you should be able to reproduce from memory:

The single largest source, and the one aspirants most often underrate, is the Government of India Act, 1935. A very large share of the text was carried over from it. When a question asks "which source contributed the most", the Act of 1935 is your answer — not the American or British constitutions that catch the eye.

Criticisms — and how a topper handles them

Mains rewards balance, so know the standard criticisms of the Constituent Assembly and the measured replies:

1. "Not a representative body" — members were indirectly elected on a limited franchise, not by universal adult suffrage. Reply: it was the most representative body then possible in the conditions of 1946, and it consciously included minorities, women and depressed classes.
2. "Not a sovereign body" — it was created by the British under the Cabinet Mission Plan. Reply: after the Indian Independence Act, 1947, it became fully sovereign and free to alter any provision.
3. "Dominated by the Congress and by lawyers" — Reply: the Congress was itself an umbrella of diverse opinion, and legal expertise was exactly what constitution-drafting demanded.
4. "Took too long" — nearly three years. Reply: the American convention and other framing exercises took comparable or longer time; deliberation, not haste, was the point.

The examiner is not looking for you to "win" the argument. They want to see that you can state a criticism fairly and answer it with evidence. That is the essence of a good Polity answer, and this chapter is the ideal place to practise it.

A quick worked example

Suppose Prelims asks: "With reference to the Constituent Assembly of India, consider the following statements." A statement might read, "The Assembly was elected on the basis of universal adult franchise." You now know this is false — election was indirect and franchise limited. Another: "The Drafting Committee was chaired by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar." True. A third: "The Objectives Resolution was moved by Dr. Rajendra Prasad." False — it was Nehru; Prasad was the President of the Assembly. With the facts above secured, you can eliminate wrong options with confidence instead of guessing. That is precisely the edge this chapter gives you.

How to study this chapter efficiently

Do not spend a week here. This is a two-day topic done well. On day one, read the historical sequence and the composition, and build the two tables — personalities and committees — in your own hand. On day two, learn the timeline, the "original numbers" (395/22/8), the sources table, and the criticisms. Then test yourself with a dozen MCQs and one short answer on the significance of the Objectives Resolution. Revisit it once a month for three months and it will be permanently yours. For a wider view of how this fits your Polity preparation, see our Indian Polity preparation strategy.