An experiment in Dyarchy and it's failure continues.....

When Sardar Patel visited the State I requested him to advise His Highness to let me go and promised that I would not claim any compensation according to the terms of my appointment as the salary for the unexpired period of my five years’s term. Mr. V. P. Menon also made some efforts to get me out. Eventually a conference was held in Jammu during Sardar Patel’s visit in which the Maharajas of Patiala, Jamnagar and Jaipur were present besides Maharaja Hari Singh. Sardar Baldev Singh was also there.

A suggestion was made to His Highness to let me go on the ground that I was wanted elsewhere where I could be more useful than in the State, especially under the conditions then prevailing, but the Maharaja insisted on my continuing in the State as Prime Minister.

Things drifted on for some time, Pandit Jawaharlal sent as his personal representative Mr. Brij Lal Nehru, to the State. Mr. Brij Lal met the Sheikh in Srinagar who, in all likelihood, suggested to him that the Maharaja should be made to abdicate.

He came to Jammu and met me at the residence of Kanwar Sir Dilip Singh who was then India’s Agent in the Jammu and Kashmir
State. He, started talking in a very presumptuous manner and suggested that His Highness should be advised to abdicate. I told him that he had no business to indulge in such talk. Being merely a personal representative of the Prime Minister, he had no business to make such a suggestion. When he went back to Delhi, Mr. Brij Lal Nehru complained against .me to the Prime Minister who wrote a nasty letter to His Highness complaining about the manner in which I had dealt with his personal representative. I wrote back protesting against his verdict ex parte and gave him my version of the talk. This was supported by Kanwar Dalip Singh. Panditji frankly withdrew all that he had written against me and expressed his regret.

To be continued.......