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Wavel Plan and Shimla Conference:
- The Wavell Plan was announced on 14 June 1945.
- It provided for an interim government, with an equal number of Hindus and Muslims in the Viceroy’s Executive Council.
- All portfolios, except war portfolio, was to be held by Indian ministers.
- For Shimla talk British released congress leaders Nehru, Sardar Patel and congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
- The Shimla Conference held between June 25 and July 14, 1945 ended without resolution.
- Jinnah demanded that all the Muslim members should be from the Muslim League and they should have a veto on all important matters.
- However, in the Shimla Conference, the Congress and the Muslim League could not come to an agreement.
- It was at a convention of Muslim League Legislators in Delhi in April 1946, that Pakistan was defined as a ‘sovereign independent state’ that ‘the region consisting of the Muslim majority provinces of Bengal and Assam in the Northeast and the Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan in the Northwest.
- The Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad rejected this idea and held that the Congress stood for a united India with complete independence.
- In the provincial elections held in early 1946 the Congress won most of the general seats and the Muslim League won most of the seats reserved for the Muslims thus bolstering its claim.