This is an important Clause making provision in the main for the transitional period while the Constituent Assemblies are still working and before the Legislatures have had time to consider whether or to what extent they wish to modify the general law and government of the Dominions. In the meantime, law and government must he carried on, and the broad scheme of the Bill as expressed in this Clause and Clause 18 is to provide for a temporary Constitution and maintenace of the general law until such time as they may be altered. Subsection (1) gives the necessary legislative power to a Constituent Assembly and attracts the provisions of Clause 6. Subsection (2) deals with the constitutional position until and unless some other provision is made by the Constituent Assembly, and it provides, broadly speaking, that the Government of each of the Dominions is to be carried on as if the Government of India Act, 1935, was as nearly as may be applied to each of them separately. I say "as nearly as may be" because in practice the Act will require very considerable modification. The provisions of the Act which involve central control, directed from London, go.

Similarly, the provisions in the Act as to the precise constitution of the different legislative assemblies go. There are, on the other hand, a number of matters in which the 1935 Act may continue in operation unless and until the Constituent Assemblies decide to alter them. In substance—I do not say in every detail because it would be impossible and I think not useful to attempt to go through every Section of the Act at this stage—the existing powers of the constitution of the Provincial Legislatures will remain in being, and so may the powers, as distinct from the constitution, of the Central Legislature. What I have in mind particularly there is that what are called the "legislative lists" set out in Schedule 7 of the 1935 Act, which allocate certain subjects as being for the Central Legislature and assign others to the Provincial ones, would continue until one or other of the Constituent Assemblies decides to alter them. So should also the provision with regard to the constitution and jurisdiction of the High Courts. This will go on and the courts will continue to function until a Constituent Assembly or Legislature decides to alter them. Some of the modifications and adaptations of the 1935 Act are obvious and some are not. The more obvious ones are the subject of express provision in Subsection (2) of the Clause, and, for the rest, the necessary modifications will be made by order of the Governor-General under the powers which are vested in the Governor-General under the subsequent Clauses of the Bill. That is the broad purpose of this Clause, and one has to read it in relation to the next Clause and in relation to Clause 18.