Reorganisation of States in India: Acts, Dates and PYQs

The map of India was not fixed in 1950. The Constitution gave Parliament the power to redraw it, and that power has been used again and again, from the creation of Andhra in 1953 to the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019. Papers ask two kinds of questions from this chapter: the constitutional procedure, and the date on which a particular state came into being. Both are set out below.

What the Constitution says

Article 1 describes India as a Union of States, which means the states did not join by agreement and cannot leave. The power to change the map follows in the next three articles:

• Article 2: Parliament may admit into the Union, or establish, new states on terms it thinks fit. This deals with territory that is not already part of India.
• Article 3: Parliament may form a new state by separating territory from a state, unite two states, alter the area of a state or change its name or boundaries. A bill of this kind can be introduced only on the recommendation of the President, and the President must refer it to the legislature of the state concerned for its views within a fixed time. Those views are not binding on Parliament.
• Article 4: the consequential changes to the First and Fourth Schedules are not treated as an amendment of the Constitution, so such a law needs only a simple majority.

In the Berubari Union case of 1960 the Supreme Court held that ceding Indian territory to a foreign country cannot be done under Article 3 and needs a constitutional amendment under Article 368.

The four classes of states before 1956

The First Schedule of 1950 sorted the units into four groups: Part A, the nine former governors' provinces; Part B, the nine former princely states with a Rajpramukh; Part C, ten chief commissioners' provinces; and Part D, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The classification was the first thing the reorganisation of 1956 swept away.

Language becomes the basis

The Dhar Commission, the Linguistic Provinces Commission of 1948, advised against redrawing provinces by language and preferred administrative convenience. The JVP Committee of 1949, made up of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, also rejected language as the basis. The demand did not die. Potti Sriramulu fasted for a Telugu-speaking state and died on 15 December 1952, and the Government gave way: Andhra State was created on 1 October 1953 out of the Telugu districts of the Madras province, the first state in independent India formed on a linguistic basis.

The Fazl Ali Commission and the Act of 1956

The States Reorganisation Commission was appointed in December 1953 under Fazl Ali, with K. M. Panikkar and H. N. Kunzru as members. Its report of 1955 accepted language as a major but not the only test, and asked that the four-fold classification be abolished. Parliament passed the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 along with the Seventh Constitutional Amendment, and from 1 November 1956 the country was arranged into fourteen states and six Union Territories.

Every state formed after 1956

Two later changes did not create states. The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 took effect on 31 October 2019 and replaced the state with two Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature and Ladakh without one. On 26 January 2020 the Union Territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and of Daman and Diu were merged into a single Union Territory.

Renamed states

A change of name also goes through Article 3. The United Provinces became Uttar Pradesh in 1950, Madras became Tamil Nadu in 1969, Mysore became Karnataka in 1973, Pondicherry became Puducherry in 2006, Uttaranchal became Uttarakhand in 2007 and Orissa became Odisha in 2011.