Districts, Divisions and Firsts of Bihar: Exam Notes

The administrative map of Bihar is one of the few parts of state general knowledge that can be learnt completely and then scored on with certainty. BPSC, BSSC, Bihar Police and the state's teaching examinations ask it every year, and so do SSC and Railway papers that carry a state section. The state today has thirty-eight districts grouped into nine divisions, with Patna as the capital, and an area of 94,163 square kilometres, which makes it the twelfth largest state of the country but, with the population of 10.41 crore recorded in 2011, the third most populous and the most densely settled.

The nine divisions and their districts

Two divisions are worth special attention because their headquarters do not share the name of the division. The Magadh division is administered from Gaya, and the Saran division from Chhapra, which is itself the headquarters of Saran district. Bhagalpur, with only two districts, is the smallest division by that count, while Patna, Tirhut and Munger each hold six.

District extremes

• Largest district by area: West Champaran, with its headquarters at Bettiah.
• Smallest district by area: Sheohar, which is also the most densely populated district of the state.
• Most populous district: Patna; least populous district: Sheikhpura.
• Least densely populated district: Kaimur, in the hilly south-west.
• Highest literacy in the 2011 Census: Rohtas; lowest: Purnia.
• Highest sex ratio: Gopalganj; lowest: Munger.
• Newest district: Arwal, carved out of Jehanabad in 2001, which took the count from thirty-seven to thirty-eight.

How the map took its present shape

Bihar was separated from the Bengal Presidency on 22 March 1912 as the province of Bihar and Orissa, and that date is observed every year as Bihar Diwas. Orissa was separated from it on 1 April 1936, leaving the province roughly in the shape in which it entered the Republic. The largest change came on 15 November 2000, when the Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000 created Jharkhand as the twenty-eighth state of India with eighteen districts taken from Bihar; the parent state was left with thirty-seven districts and an area reduced from about 1,73,877 square kilometres to 94,163. Arwal was created in 2001 and no district has been added since, which is why the figure of thirty-eight has stayed stable for more than two decades. Districts in Bihar, as in every state, are created by the state government by notification, so the number is an administrative decision and not a constitutional one.

The firsts of Bihar

The Patna High Court itself was created by Letters Patent in February 1916 and began sitting on 1 March 1916; before that Bihar fell under the Calcutta High Court. One more first belongs to recent administration rather than to a person: in the panchayat elections of 2006 Bihar became the first state in the country to reserve half the seats in panchayati raj institutions for women.

Points for revision

Learn the divisions with their headquarters first, because a question on Magadh or Saran is answered only by knowing that the headquarters are at Gaya and Chhapra. Then learn the four extremes of area and population as two pairs: West Champaran the largest and Sheohar the smallest in area, Patna the most and Sheikhpura the least populous. Keep the three dates of the state's formation apart, 1912 for the province, 1936 for the separation of Orissa and 2000 for Jharkhand, and attach 2001 to Arwal. Finally, learn the firsts as a list of names rather than of offices, since the question is usually put the other way round.