# Ambedkar nearly lost Constituent Assembly seat in 1947 2026-08-09T18:09:46+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet B R Ambedkar, the man who would chair the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution, almost lost his seat in the Constituent Assembly weeks after Partition, LiveLaw reports. His Bengal constituency ceased to exist when the province was divided. For a window in mid-1947, the country's most formidable legal mind had no formal standing in the body writing the nation's founding document. Congress leaders, including Rajendra Prasad and Sardar Patel, intervened. B G Kher, Bombay premier, arranged for Ambedkar to fill a vacancy created by jurist M R Jayakar. Ambedkar was elected unopposed. The party that had opposed him for two decades voluntarily gave him a platform, calculating that a Constitution without its sharpest critic of caste hierarchy would be a weaker document. ## Coverage - livelaw.in Tags: Ambedkar, Congress, Constituent Assembly, Indian Constitution, Partition Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/ambedkar-nearly-lost-constituent-assembly-seat-in-1947/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/ambedkar-nearly-lost-constituent-assembly-seat-in-1947/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes.