Constitution Day celebrated on 26th November every year to commemorate the adoption of the Constitution of India. On 26th November 1949, the Constituent Assembly formally adopted the Constitution of India. It came into force on 26th January 1950 that is observed as Republic Day.
The two-month period between the adoption and enforcement of the Constitution was used for a thorough reading and translation from English to Hindi. The Constituent Assembly met for 166 days spread over two years, 11 months, and 18 days before the Constitution was adopted.
Before the Constitution was adopted on November 26, 1949, Rajendra Prasad gave a thanksgiving speech in the Constituent Assembly. While listing out the challenges Rajendra Prasad said he had two regrets over the making of the constitution.
His first regret was that the MLAs and MPs were to have no qualification of education and the like. Rajendra Prasad said, “I would have liked to have some qualifications laid down for members of the Legislatures.”
“It is anomalous that we should insist upon high qualifications for those who administer or help in administering the law but none for those who made it except that they are elected.”
“A lawgiver requires intellectual equipment but even more than that capacity to take a balanced view of things to act independently and above all to be true to those fundamental things of life in one word to have character.”
He said, “It is not possible to devise any yardstick for measuring the moral qualities of a man and so long as that is not possible, our Constitution will remain defective.”
Rajendra Prasad said, “The other regret is that we have not been able to draw up our first Constitution of a free Bharat in an Indian language. The difficulties in both cases were practical and proved insurmountable. But that does not make the regret any the less poignant.”