Opportune time to create smaller states

Three states, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Jharkhand, celebrated their Silver Jubilee in November 2025, having been created by Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government in 2000.

- NAVODIT MEHRA

This was the largest reorganisation of states after 1956. This major bifurcation represented asignificant departure from creating states on the basis of language as one of the primary distinct factors. These states were created as there was a longstanding demand of people of those regions, because they felt that their region had been neglected and no significant development had taken place. Such a demand also gave rise to Telangana in the year 2014, which came into existence after bifurcating Andhra Pradesh. These new states created optimism among residents of Bundelkhand, Coorg, Purvanchal and Vidarbha.

The First State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was established in 1952 under the Chairmanship of Dr. Fazal Ali, with K.M. Panikkar and H.N. Kunzru as its members. The primary task of the commission was to restructure the boundaries of states for better governance. The commission adopted language as the primary principle to form state boundaries. It was in their minds that alinguistic entity would achieve better governance as the citizens would be able to communicate in their mother tongue with their leaders and executives.

Later, the State Reorganisation Act was passed in 1956, resulting in the first federal map of India having 14 states and 6 union territories. At that time, the population of India was around 407 crore. Today, we have 28 states and 8 union territories. These states could be created as the Constitution provided flexibility in the creation of new states; hence, the framers of the Constitution did not create any article that could pose an impediment in the creation of a new state, or to change the names of states, unite two or more states or unite any territory with a part of any state.