To avoid disputes and delays, the division was done in secret. The final Awards were ready on 9 August and the 12 August, but not published until two days after the partition.

According to Read, 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: (1) the area housed an army arms depot and (2) contained the headwaters of a canal which irrigated the princely state of Bikaner, which would accede to India.

Likewise, it is not known how Radcliffe was persuaded to award the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan. This came as a shock to Patel and Nehru who had assumed the areas would be awarded to India since they were 98% non-Muslim.Similerly, the decisions to keep muslim majority districts of Murshidabad and Malda in Bengal were also kept so secret that the inhabitants hoisted Pakistani flag there till the award was made public on 17th August, 1947.

The truth of how these decisions were made may never be known since Radcliffe destroyed all of his records and Mountbatten expressly denied any special-knowledge or favouritism.

ગુરદાસપુર જિલ્લો
અમલવારી
રેડક્લિફ રેખા સાથેનાં વિવાદો
ગુપ્તતા