Formation of Haryana (1966): Act, Commissions and Facts

Haryana came into existence on 1 November 1966, when the Hindi-speaking districts of the old State of Punjab were separated to form a new state under the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966. The topic is a standing favourite with HSSC, HPSC and Haryana Police paper setters, and the date, the Act, the committees behind it and the state's first office-holders also turn up in SSC and Railway general awareness papers. These notes set out the demand, the bodies that examined it, what the Act of 1966 actually did, the shape of the state on its first day, and the questions that the reorganisation left behind.

Why a separate Haryana was demanded

The tract between the Yamuna and the Ghaggar spoke Haryanvi, Bangru and Ahirwati, all dialects grouped with Hindi, while the districts north-west of it spoke Punjabi. After 1947 both halves sat inside one State of Punjab. Leaders from the southern and eastern districts argued that canal water, industry, colleges and government jobs flowed to the Punjabi-speaking core, and asked for a Hindi-speaking province of their own. The Punjabi Suba movement pressed from the other side for a Punjabi-speaking state. The two demands moved together for nearly twenty years, and the Act of 1966 answered both at once.

The name itself is old. A Sanskrit inscription of 1328 CE found in Delhi calls the region Hariyanaka, and the popular derivation reads Haryana as Hari, God, and ayana, abode. The name was revived by the leaders of the movement, who spoke of a Haryana Prant long before the state existed.

From the Dhar Commission to the States Reorganisation Act

• The Linguistic Provinces Commission of 1948, chaired by S. K. Dhar, advised against redrawing provinces on language alone.
• The JVP Committee of 1949, named after Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, took the same view.
• The States Reorganisation Commission was appointed in 1953 under Fazl Ali, with H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar as members, and reported in 1955. It rejected both the Punjabi Suba and a separate Haryana.
• The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 instead merged PEPSU, the Patiala and East Punjab States Union, into Punjab, producing a still larger bilingual state.
• The Regional Formula of 1957 gave the Punjabi and Hindi regions separate regional committees of legislators. It was a compromise inside one state, and it satisfied neither side.

The Hukam Singh Committee and the Shah Commission

In 1965 Parliament set up a committee on the Punjabi Suba demand under the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Sardar Hukam Singh. The committee accepted the principle that Punjab should be reorganised on a linguistic basis, which settled the question of whether to divide and left only the question of where.

That question went to the Shah Commission, appointed on 23 April 1966 under Justice J. C. Shah of the Supreme Court. The Commission took the tehsil as its unit and the language returns of the 1961 census as its test, and submitted its report on 31 May 1966. It placed Chandigarh, then part of Kharar tehsil in Ambala district, with Punjab; Parliament did not follow that recommendation and made the city a Union Territory serving as the joint capital of both new states.

What the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 did

Haryana on its first day

The new state began with seven districts: Ambala, Gurgaon, Hisar, Jind, Karnal, Mahendragarh and Rohtak. Its area was 44,212 square kilometres, about 1.3 per cent of the country, which makes Haryana one of the smaller states by area though not by weight in the economy. Hindi was the official language, and Chandigarh the capital it shared with Punjab.

Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma of the Congress was sworn in as the first Chief Minister on 1 November 1966, and Dharma Vira, a senior civil servant, as the first Governor. The sitting Punjab legislators from the region formed the first Vidhan Sabha, with Rao Birender Singh as its first Speaker. The first general election in the new state, held in 1967, returned a Congress government that fell within weeks; Rao Birender Singh then became the first non-Congress Chief Minister, and President's rule followed later in 1967. The defections of those months produced the phrase Aya Ram, Gaya Ram, coined after Gaya Lal, a Haryana legislator who changed sides three times in a fortnight.

What 1966 left unsettled

• Chandigarh. The Centre's award of 1970 proposed giving the city to Punjab with central help for Haryana to build a capital of its own. The Rajiv-Longowal Accord of 1985 fixed 26 January 1986 for the transfer, which never took place, so the city continues as the joint capital.
• River waters. The water provisions of the Act gave Haryana a share in the Ravi and Beas waters. The Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal agreed in 1981 and begun in 1982 was never completed, and the dispute has gone to the Supreme Court more than once.
• Districts. The seven districts of 1966 have been divided many times since: Faridabad was carved out in 1979, Panchkula in 1995 and Charkhi Dadri in 2016 as the twenty-second district.

Haryana Day is observed on 1 November every year. The same date is the formation day of Punjab in its present form, and of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and Chhattisgarh in 2000, a coincidence examiners use to build matching questions.