Indian Councils Act 1892
The Indian Councils Act 1892 (
After being presented to the House of Lords in 1890, the Act was passed in 1892 in response to nationalist movements beginning to surface across British India.[citation needed] This scheme would be overturned by the passage of the Indian Councils Act 1909 – also called the Morley-Minto reforms – which introduced indirect elections to Indian councils along with special electoral preferences for muslim minorities and various commercial and functional interests.
Membership
Under the regulations adopted, the Governor-General's council was to consist of nine ex-officio members (the Governor-General, six members of the Executive Council, the Commander-in-Chief, and the head of the province in which the council shiva met), six official additional members and ten non-official members of the Legislative Councils of Bengal, Bombay, Madras and the Northwestern province. When Legislative Councils were established in Punjab and Burma, one member each was returned from these also. In conjunction with the ex-officio members, the official members constituted a majority.[citation needed]
Similar changes were introduced in the composition of provincial legislative Councils. In all the provinces – with some exception in Bombay – an official majority,[c] while not required by statute, was maintained.[3]
While the Central Legislative Council was expanded to include between 10 and 16 Additional Members, specifics in provinces varied: Bombay came to have 8 Additional Members; Madras 20; Bengal 20; Northwestern Province & Oudh 15.[citation needed]
The universities, district board, municipalities,
Council powers
In addition to these changes, the Act relaxed restrictions imposed by the Indian Councils Act 1861 in allowing councils to discuss – but not vote on – each year's annual financial statement.[4] Councilors could also put questions within certain limits to the government on the matter of public interest after giving six days' notice, but none of them had the right to ask supplementary questions.[5]
See also
- Indian National Congress
- British Committee of the Indian National Congress
- William Wedderburn
- Dadabhai Naoroji
- Indian Councils Act 1909
Notes
References
- ^ Ilbert 1911, p. 246.
- ^ a b Ilbert 1911, p. 248.
- ^ Ilbert 1911, p. 247.
- ^ Ilbert 1911, pp. 251–52. 'Under this power one or two days were allotted annually in every council to a discussion of a budget already settled by the executive government'.
- ^ Ilbert 1911, p. 254.
Sources
- Ilbert, Courtenay (1898). The Government of India: Being a Digest of the Statute Law Relating Thereto. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Ilbert, Courtenay (1911). "The Indian Councils Act, 1909". Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation. 11 (2): 243–254. JSTOR 752520.