<P> Radcliffe justified the casual division with the truism that no matter what he did, people would suffer . The thinking behind this justification may never be known since Radcliffe "destroyed all his papers before he left India". He departed on Independence Day itself, before even the boundary awards were distributed . By his own admission, Radcliffe was heavily influenced by his lack of fitness for the Indian climate and his eagerness to depart India . </P> <P> The implementation was no less hasty than the process of drawing the border . On 16 August 1947 at 5: 00 pm, the Indian and Pakistani representatives were given two hours to study copies, before the Radcliffe award was published on 17 August . </P> <P> To avoid disputes and delays, the division was done in secret . The final Awards were ready on 9 August and 12 August, but not published until two days after the partition . </P> <P> According to Read and Fisher, there is some circumstantial evidence that Nehru and Patel were secretly informed of the Punjab Award's contents on August 9 or 10, either through Mountbatten or Radcliffe's Indian assistant secretary . Regardless of how it transpired, the award was changed to put a salient east of the Sutlej canal within India's domain instead of Pakistan's . This area consisted of two Muslim - majority tehsils with a combined population of over half a million . There were two apparent reasons for the switch: the area housed an army arms depot, and contained the headwaters of a canal which irrigated the princely state of Bikaner, which would accede to India . </P>

Who chaired the boundary commision in 1947 to demarcate the boundary line between india and pakistan