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gatives. In the following extracts from A. B. Keith, an eminent authority on British Constitutional Law, this position is clearly set out:—

"It is clear that the British Crown has succeeded to the Paramount Power over India once possessed de jure and de facto by the Moghul Emperor, acquired de facto by the East Indian Company, and finally assumed by the East India Company de jure by the disappearance of the Emperor."

"The Crown was now in India what the Emperor had been, a completely sovereign power predominant over all others and claiming allegiance. The tone adopted by Canning is explicable only by the realisation that the Crown had succeeded to the whole authority of the Empire, in so far as it chose to exert it and the Crown unlike the Emperor had means fully adequate to make effective use of its powers".

It is thus an established fact that the British Crown itself did not acquire paramountcy rights by any express grant, cession or transfer. In this context, a declaration issued by the Crown terminating its relationship with States could determine only the Crown's own future relationship with the States; it could not have the effect of divesting the successor Government of its status vis-a-vis the States and its rights and obligations in relation to them inhereing in it as the supreme power in India.

266. In spite of the declaration regarding the lapse of paramountcy, the fundamentals on which it rested remained. The essential defence and security requirements of the country and the compulsions of geography did not cease to be operative with the end of British rule in India. If anything, in the context of world events, they have become more imperative. The Central Government in India which succeeded the British was unquestionably the paramount power in India both de facto and de jure and that Government alone was the only completely independent sovereign in India. It was the special responsibility of this Government to protect all territories in India from external aggression and to preserve peace and good order throughout the country. All the factors which established the paramountcy of the British Government over the States operated to assign a similar position to the Government of India. The process of usage and sufferance, which was an important source of paramountcy rights of the British Crown, started even before the declaration regarding the lapse of paramountcy became effective. The Rulers of States in several cases themselves voluntarily submitted to the jurisdiction of the Government of India in the paramountcy field. To all these