The plan of Sir Stafford Cripps envisaged that after the Second World War,

The answer is D. The Cripps Mission of March 1942 offered that after the war an elected Constituent Assembly would frame a constitution for India, with India to be a Dominion with a status equal to the UK and other Dominions. It was also to have the right to secede from the Commonwealth, and provinces that did not accept the new constitution could frame their own arrangements.

• A is wrong: Complete independence was not offered. Cripps kept India within the Commonwealth framework, and the demand for complete independence was what the Quit India movement later pressed.
• B is wrong: The plan did not partition India before independence. It only allowed non-acceding provinces the option to stay out, a provision that later fed the Pakistan demand.
• C is wrong: No republic was proposed. The Dominion scheme kept the Crown as head and linked India to the Commonwealth.

Core concept: the constitutional status of India as a Dominion versus a sovereign republic. This links to the Mains theme of how Britain's post-war promises shaped the transfer of power and Partition, and to the Cabinet Mission of 1946 that followed.

Trap: Candidates often pick B because the provincial opt-out is remembered as a partition seed. The question asks what the plan envisaged, and that was Dominion status.