INTERIM PLAN FOR INDIA

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24910, 25 June 1946, Page 5

INTERIM PLAN FOR INDIA

New Development In Talks STATEMENT BY CONGRESS LEADER (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.15 p.m.) NEW DELHI, June 24. A “new development” had taken place in the negotiations for an interim Government for India, said the Congress president (Dr. Maulana Azad). K He refused to express an opinion on whether the development was hopeful. The correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Agency says, however, that there was an unexpected air of cheerfulness among members of the Congress Working Committee after their morning meeting. - Mr Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhai Patel early this morning conferred with members of the British Cabinet mission. Earlier Dr. Azad told the New Delhi correspondent of the Associated Press that the Congress Party had rejected the British plan for an interim coalition Government. “The thing is now over as far as the Congress Party is concerned, and a resolution rejecting the plan is being drafted,” he said. , The correspondent said that Dr. Azad was weary after a hectic day of meetings culminating in a three-hour session of the Congress Party’s working committee.

“The Congress Party’s working committee will to-morrow pass a resolution, to which Mr Gandhi is putting the finishing touches, rejecting the British plan for an interim Government, but no Congress Party decision has yet been made on the long-term proposals,” gays Reuter’s correspondent in New Delhi. “India, three months to the day after the British Cabinet Mission arrived, faces the imminent prospect of a complete breakdown and consequent political and economic confusion unless the Viceroy concedes Congress’s belated demand for the inclusion of the Nationalist Moslems in its so-called quota of Cabinet seats—a demand which runs counter to the Moslem League’s claim to represent the AllIndian Moslems, and thus puts paid to any chance of the Viceroy forming a

coalition, which the wider national interests clearly require.” Mr Gandhi, at a prayer meeting, said: “Let us not look to the British Cabinet. Let us ourselves become a Cabinet mission and develop that power and authority. We cannot build freedom in a hurry nor get it in a hurry. We have to work patiently.” “Police opened fire to disperse crowds in the third day of demonstrations at Nadura against the arrest of Pandit Nehru,” says Reuter’s correspondent in Madras. “The demonstrators attempted to throw burning oilsoaked rags on to house roofs. Railway traffic was dislocated for four hours because sleepers were lifted from the tracks.

“The police fire killed two persons and injured two. In the last two days the police have used tear gas to disperse crowds near the mills.”