While revising modern Indian history for UPSC, I keep finding summaries that describe grouping under the Cabinet Mission Plan differently. Some say provinces were free to choose their groups; others say participation in the initial grouping process was compulsory.
My confusion is about when a province could exercise a choice. Was refusing to join a group at the outset different from leaving it after the new constitutional arrangements and first elections?
Could someone explain how the plan’s provisions on provincial grouping related to the three sections of the proposed Constituent Assembly, and why Congress and the Muslim League interpreted them differently? An explanation using Assam or the North-West Frontier Province would help me understand what was at stake.
I want to avoid reducing this to “Congress opposed grouping and the League supported it” without understanding the actual constitutional disagreement.
