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What if India had 75 states? Demands for redrawing state lines call for a permanent SRC

The creation of a permanent States Reorganisation Commission may open a can of worms but brushing these demands under the carpet is not a viable option.

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The reorganisation of states on linguistic lines was an article of faith during the freedom struggle, but the horrors of the Partition made both Nehru and Patel agree to defer the sensitive issue. However in 1952, when the Telugu-dominated districts of the Madras State were constituted as the Andhra State after freedom fighter Potti Sriramulu’s fast-unto-death, the Government of India was compelled to notify a States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) to address the long-standing demand of creating linguistic provinces.

First SRC: 14 states, 6 UTs

Set up in 1953, the commission comprised Justice Fazl Ali, diplomat KM Panikkar and parliamentarian HN Kunzru. At that point (with the exception of Andhra) India had retained the nine provinces of British India. The 562 princely states had been reconstituted and governed by Rajpramukhs and chief commissioners. Meanwhile, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands was directly under an administrator appointed by the Union government. Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and to a large extent Orissa, Saurashtra, and West Bengal were settled on linguistic lines. Many others, including Bombay, Assam, Hyderabad, Mysore, Punjab, Madras, and Vindhya Pradesh continued to be bilingual or multilingual states.

After touring the country extensively for two years, and examining over 1.5 lakh memoranda, the SRC recommended the creation of 14 states — Assam,  Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Bombay, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Madras, Madhya Pradesh, Mysore, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal — and six Union Territories of Delhi, Tripura, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar islands, and Lakshadweep.


Also Read: Is India ready for delimitation of constituencies? Time has come for reorganisation of states


Diluting SRC recommendations

Over the years, the recommendations of the SRC have been diluted. The first instance was the Bombay Reorganisation Act of 1960, which split the Bombay State into the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. The 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution facilitated the creation of Nagaland, the incorporation of Pondicherry into the Union of India, and the creation of legislative assembles for Himachal Pradesh, Tripura, and Goa.

The Punjab Reorganisation Act 1966 dissolved the state of East Punjab. It became modern-day Punjab and a new Hindi-speaking state of Haryana. The Act also allowed the transfer of hill districts to Himachal Pradesh and established the new union territory of Chandigarh, which was designated as the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana.

Statehood was conferred upon Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura in 1971. Sikkim joined the Indian Union as a state in 1975. A decade later, in 1987, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Goa became states while the erstwhile Portuguese exclaves of Daman and Diu became a separate union territory.

After a lull, the three new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh were created in 2000, but by then there was a  bipartisan consensus with regard to the establishment of new states and both the BJP and the Congress vied with each other to claim credit. Incidentally, all three were Hindi-speaking states—the driving force behind the reorganisation was a strong sense of regional identity.


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Modern-day reorganisation 

When the demand for the second Telugu-speaking state of Telangana was conceded in 2014 by then-UPA home minister P Chidambaram, RSS ideologue MG Vaidya suggested the appointment of a (second) SRC to examine this as well as other statehood demands.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati wrote to then-PM Manmohan Singh proposing the reorganisation of Uttar Pradesh into Purvanchal, Pashchim Pradesh, Bundelkhand, and Awadh Pradesh. The Uttar Pradesh Assembly had passed a proposal for the split in 2011, but current CM Yogi Adityanath has said that it will not move ahead.

The demand for statehood for Maru Pradesh, from the western region of Rajasthan, has existed since the 1950s. It has been raised in recent times by leaders including former union minister and MP Jaswant Singh, and Congress leader Rameshwar Lal Dudi.

However, many more eyebrows were raised when the demand for the second Maratha state of Vidarbha, comprising the Nagpur and Amravati divisions of eastern Maharashtra, picked up momentum after the Telangana announcement. The proponents averred that as early as 1955, the SRC had recommended the creation of Vidarbha as a separate state—a move welcomed by Dr BR Ambedkar as he felt that this region was not as advanced as the rest of Maharashtra on most socio-economic parameters.

But this is not all. There are several websites devoted to ‘new’ and ‘proposed’ states within the Union of India. Often the territories that are sought to be included in the ‘proposed’ states are common—Gorkhaland, Kamtapur, and North Bengal all seek the areas under the Siliguri sub-division of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, and Alipurduar – though these are now Bengali-dominated districts.

There is also a demand for a separate Jungle Mahal in the Jhargram region of West Bengal and/or its merger with Jharkhand. There is a long-standing demand of statehood for Bodoland and Barak Valley in Assam; Coorg in Karnataka; Baghelkhand, comprising districts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Peadesh; Rayalaseema in Andhra Pradesh; Saurashtra in Gujarat; Mithila from districts in Jharkhand and Bihar, and Panun Kashmir as a special enclave for Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir.

There are still others—like a Bru Land within Mizoram and territory for the Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh which are microscopic specks on the firmament— but then who can stop any group of citizens from political aspirations, as long as they are nonviolent and respect the territorial integrity of India? It is important to clarify that the above is just an illustrative, not a comprehensive list of statehood demands.


Also Read: Newer states are a boon for bureaucracy. But a critical factor can make or break them


Alternative suggestions

Gautam Desiraju, a structural chemist, educationist and professor at the Indian Institute of Science, and a grandson of C Rajagopalachari, in his book Bharat: India 2.0 has proposed the reorganisation of India into 75 states that reflect the ‘civilisational core’ and the rich diversity of Dharmic India.

He looks to the kingdoms and Janapadas in the times of the Mahabharata for inspiration. He postulates a clean sweep from the extant organisation of states for he feels that most of them are basically ‘adjustments imposed upon the administrative provinces’ established by the British, rather than ‘organic entities’ with their powerful tradition of language, history, mythology and common memory.

Academic Ashutosh Kumar has another suggestion — the creation of a permanent States Reorganisation Commission to examine the demands for new states emanating not only from state legislatures and Parliamentarians but also from the wider cross-section of society.

The SRC is best suited to take a long-term and holistic view, which will factor in the relevant ethnic and linguistic considerations, but also incorporate the perspective of governance and administration. At the same time, it must also address the issue of the growing asymmetry among states, especially in the context of the delimitation exercise that will follow the publication of the results of the delayed census of 2021.

Whether this will strengthen the democratic firmament or open a can of worms is still an open question — but brushing these demands under the carpet is also not a viable option. The sooner there is an institutional mechanism to deliberate on these issues, based on empirical facts, while also examining and expanding the options available under the fifth and sixth schedules to meet political aspirations, the better it would be for the democratic polity of India.

Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Till recently, he was the Director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)

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