The Radcliffe Committee was appointed to

Answer: (c) delimit the boundaries between India and Pakistan

Cyril Radcliffe chaired the boundary commissions that drew the new borders between India and Pakistan in 1947. They divided Punjab and Bengal, so the task was to delimit the India–Pakistan boundary.

• ✓ (c) Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer unfamiliar with India, was given just five weeks to draw the new borders. The result was the Radcliffe Line, which split Punjab and Bengal.
• ✗ (a) The Radcliffe task was territorial: drawing borders. It was not a mechanism for resolving the problem of minorities.
• ✗ (b) The Indian Independence Act, 1947 was passed by the British Parliament. Radcliffe's commissions were confined to fixing the boundaries in Punjab and Bengal, not to giving effect to the Act as a whole.
• ✗ (d) Radcliffe was not appointed to enquire into riots. His work was to demarcate boundaries in Punjab and Bengal.

Remember · Radcliffe = chairman of the Boundary Commissions for Punjab and Bengal (1947). The Radcliffe Line is the India–Pakistan border.

📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 8 Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Part 2), Ch 2 (practise this chapter)

Question: UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) 2014, General Studies paper. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 25 Oct 2026 (how we verify). · Report an error