After India's independence from the British in August 1947, its members served as the nation's 'Provisional Parliament', as well as the Constituent Assembly.

It was conceived and created by V. K. Krishna Menon, who first outlined its necessity in 1933 and enshrined it as an Indian National Congress demand.

[1] The Indian National Congress held its session at Lucknow in April 1936 presided by Jawaharlal Nehru.

C. Rajagopalachari again voiced the demand for a Constituent Assembly on 15 November 1939 based on adult franchise, and was accepted by the British in August 1940.

The Constitution of India was drafted by the Constituent Assembly, and it was implemented under the Cabinet Mission Plan on 16 May 1946.

The Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 9 December 1946, reassembling on 14 August 1947 as a sovereign body and successor to the British parliament's authority in India.

As a result of the partition, under the Mountbatten plan, a separate Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was established on 3 June 1947.

The Assembly was not elected based on complete universal adult suffrage, and Muslims and Sikhs received special representation as minorities.

A large part of the Constituent Assembly was drawn from the Indian National Congress Party (69%), and included a wide diversity of ideologies and opinions—from conservatives, progressives, Marxists, liberals and Hindu revivalists.

In his classic history of the Indian Constitution, the historian Granville Austin describes the Constituent Assembly as "India in microcosm.

"[6] Further, as Achyut Chetan has shown in his book Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic, the women members of the Constituent Assembly "formed a distinct group in that august body, spoke in a distinct feminist parlance, and shared a constitutional vision of justice to such an extent that they can collectively be called the ‘mothers’ of the Indian Constitution.

"[7] Female members were initially Begum Aizaz Rasul, Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, Ammu Swaminathan, Dakshayani Velayaudhan, G. Durgabai, Sucheta Kripalani, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Purnima Banerji, Kamala Chaudhri, Sarojini Naidu, Hansa Mehta, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Leela Roy, and Malati Choudhury.

Mookerjee, additionally to chairing the assembly's Minorities Committee, was appointed governor of West Bengal after India became a republic.