To deal with the partition work efficiently, a partition council was formed under the chairmanship of the Viceroy, in which HM Patel as the representative of India and Chaudhry Mohammad Ali as the representative of Pakistan. Twenty committees and sub-committees were formed to assist him, in which the services of about a hundred high officials were taken. The work of these committees was to prepare various types of proposals and send them to the division council for approval.
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre have given a very interesting description of this division process - 'There were now exactly 73 days left for the 15th of August to come. The divorce papers should be ready in any case in the meantime. To keep the employees constantly alert and agile, Mountbatten got a special calendar printed and installed in each of the concerned offices in Delhi. Every day a page of that calendar was torn. Inside the red circle in the middle of each page, the figure would be shown, which would tell how many days are now left for the 15th of August. As if the countdown to a nuclear explosion had begun, each day was being counted - and the day was getting shorter every day.'
In that quintessential Indian divorce, the hefty work of preparing the documents of the property ultimately fell on the shoulders of two men, both lawyers of equal status. …… one of them was a Muslim and the other a Hindu…… Chaudhary Mohammad Ali and H.M. Patel were handling file on file every day protecting the interests of Muslims and Hindus respectively.
About one hundred employees, who were divided into Bsec committees and sub-committees, daily gave various reports to those lawyers. On that basis the two lawyers who prepared the letter of recommendation would have been sent to the division council for final approval. The Viceroy himself was the President of this division council.
…… The fiercest debates between the two parties took place over money. The most delicate question was that of debt, which did not seem easy to recover from the British, because their treasury was empty. …… When the British were leaving India, then 500 billion dollars of India used to go towards them. This tremendous burden of debt was imposed on England during the World War.
Apart from the national borrowing, money was trapped in many other forms. Cash of State Banks. Gold bricks kept in the vaults of Bank of India. Among the Nagas beheading in a jumble, small sums kept with the district commissioners, who are doing their duty by sitting in the hut, the value of stationery etc. of the post offices spread across the country.
Decisions were taken by the council for the distribution of money, goods and even furniture kept in banks, government departments and post offices. It was decided in Partition that Pakistan would receive 17.5 per cent of the cash held in the banks and 17.5 per cent of the sterling balance.
It was also decided that Pakistan would have to pay 17.5 percent of India's national debt. It was also decided that whatever can be removed by transfer in the vast government machinery of the country, 80 percent of it should be given to India and 20 percent to Pakistan.
…….. There were a total of 18 thousand 77 miles of roads and 26 thousand 421 miles of railway tracks in the country. Of these, 4 thousand 913 miles of roads and 7 thousand 112 miles of railway tracks went to Pakistan's part. The Viceroy's white and golden train came to India, in return all the cars of the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army and the Governor of Punjab were given to Pakistan.
The Viceroy had six carriages with gold plates and six with silver plates. Of these, the carriages with gold sheets came to the part of India and the wagons with silver sheets went to the part of Pakistan.
Moseley has written - Two separate boards of four judges were formed for Punjab and Bengal. Each board had two judges from India and two from Pakistan. Barring two judges, all the remaining judges were judges of the High Court of India.
C. C. Biswas and B. C. Biswas under the supervision of Sir Cyril. Of. Mukherjee (from Congress) and Saleh Mohammad Akram and M.A. Rahman (on behalf of the Muslim League) will partition Bengal. Meherchand Mahajan and Tej Singh (from Congress) and Din Mohammad and Mohammad Munir (from Muslim League) will partition Punjab.