Timeline
16 May 1946
Announced on by a delegation comprising Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps, and A.
10 July 1946
This disagreement, exacerbated by Jawaharlal Nehru's statement on , led to the Muslim League withdrawing support and calling for Direct Action Day on 16 Augu…
16 August 1946
This disagreement, exacerbated by Jawaharlal Nehru's statement on 10 July 1946, led to the Muslim League withdrawing support and calling for Direct Action Da…
6 December 1946
The crux of the dispute lay in whether grouping was compulsory or optional — the Mission's interpretation, endorsed by the Viceroy and later by the British G…
6 June 1946
The Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah initially accepted the Plan on , reading the grouping provision as the embryo of Pakistan, while the Congress acc…
29 July 1946
Jawaharlal Nehru's press statement of 10 July 1946 at Bombay, asserting that the Congress would enter the Assembly "unfettered by agreements" and could alter…
3 June 1947
The collapse of the Plan effectively foreclosed the last serious attempt at a united India and set the trajectory toward the Mountbatten Plan of and Partition.
9 December 1946
The typical question angle asks whether the Plan could have preserved Indian unity, the legal nature of grouping, and how the Constituent Assembly that conve…
Positions at a glance
Indian National Congress
The Cabinet Mission Plan was the scheme unveiled on 16 May 1946 by a three-member British delegation — Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State for India), Sir Stafford Cripps (President of the Board of Trade), and A. V. Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) — dispatched by Prime Minister Clement Attlee to negotiate the constitutional framework for transferring power to Indian hands. Confronted by an irreconcilable demand for Pakistan from the All-India Muslim League and an insistence on a strong centre from the Indian National Congress, the Mission rejected both a sovereign Pakistan and a fully unitary India. It proposed instead a loose, three-tier federation: a Union centre confined to defence, foreign affairs, and communications; the provinces retaining all residuary powers; and an intermediate tier of three "Groups" of provinces (Group A of Hindu-majority provinces, Group B of the north-west Muslim-majority provinces, and Group C comprising Bengal and Assam) empowered to frame their own group constitutions.
All-India Muslim League
The Cabinet Mission Plan was the scheme unveiled on 16 May 1946 by a three-member British delegation — Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State for India), Sir Stafford Cripps (President of the Board of Trade), and A. V. Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) — dispatched by Prime Minister Clement Attlee to negotiate the constitutional framework for transferring power to Indian hands. Confronted by an irreconcilable demand for Pakistan from the All-India Muslim League and an insistence on a strong centre from the Indian National Congress, the Mission rejected both a sovereign Pakistan and a fully unitary India. It proposed instead a loose, three-tier federation: a Union centre confined to defence, foreign affairs, and communications; the provinces retaining all residuary powers; and an intermediate tier of three "Groups" of provinces (Group A of Hindu-majority provinces, Group B of the north-west Muslim-majority provinces, and Group C comprising Bengal and Assam) empowered to frame their own group constitutions.
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In June 1946 Muhammad Ali Jinnah's All-India Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, then withdrew on 29 July after Nehru's Bombay statement, calling Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946.
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