Government of India Act, 1919 & 1935

Imagine a minister who is fully responsible to an elected legislature for a subject — but has no real power to act on it, because the Governor can override him whenever it actually matters. That is provincial dyarchy under the Government of India Act, 1919, and it is exactly the kind of half-measure that made the far more ambitious Government of India Act, 1935 necessary just sixteen years later.

In two minutes

The Government of India Act, 1919 introduced dyarchy at the provincial level and a bicameral central legislature with limited accountability, while the Government of India Act, 1935 extended the dyarchy principle to the federal centre, created the Federal Court, and refined the federal structure that the Constitution of India would later inherit.

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