Been feeling sad to hear about UP being divided into 4 new states ! WHY ? I grew up seeing 25 States, and we already 28 and counting. Seems it is only the Central Funding which is behind all demands for new States. Why can't we reorganise our adminsitrative setup better ? Why split ? And the wonder of wonders....not a single news channel and its galaxy of mind-bending news anchors, have felt a patriotic pinch !
So I decided to do a fact check....read on. After the partition of British India into India and Pakistan, there were in India 9 provinces and about 460 princely states. (Wikipedia lists over 700 of these CLICK HERE !)Most of the princely states within the Indian territory consented to join India. Some joined India under their own initiative and others were convinced by Sardar Villabbhai Patel to join India. Patel who hold negotiations with the princely states, came to an agreement with the princely state rulers that they would continue getting monthly allowances as they were given to them by the British. And so began the designing of the internal map of India. The big princely states of Mysore, Hyderabad and Kashmir remained in their original sizes and became new Indian states. To the big provinces like Bombay, Orissa and Bengal, small princely states around them were joined and these provinces also became new India's states. In north India some clinging princely states were joined together to create a new state. Rajastan was created in this way.
The former French and Portuguese colonies in India were incorporated into the Republic as the union territories of Puducherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa, Daman and Diu in 1962. Several new states and union territories have been created out of existing states since 1956. Bombay State was split into the linguistic states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 by the Bombay Reorganization Act. Nagaland was made a state on 1 December 1963. The Punjab Reorganization Act of 1966 divided the Punjab along linguistic lines, creating a new Hindi-speaking state of Haryana on 1 November, transferring the northern districts of Punjab to Himachal Pradesh, and designating Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, a union territory. Statehood was conferred upon Himachal Pradesh on 25 January 1971, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura on 21 January 1972 the Kingdom of Sikkim joined the Indian Union as a state on 26 April 1975. In 1987, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram became states on 20 February, followed by Goa on 30 May, while Goa's northern exclaves of Daman and Diu became a separate union territory.
In 2000 three new states were created; Chhattisgarh (1 November 2000) was created out of eastern Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal (9 November 2000), since renamed Uttarakhand, was created out of the Hilly regions of northwest Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand (15 November 2000) was created out of the southern districts of Bihar.[citation needed] The Union Territories of Delhi and Puducherry have since been given the right to elect their own legislatures and they are now counted as small states.
AND THEY NEED MORE !
The Centre has received demands for creation of at least 10 new states, including a separate Mithilanchal in Bihar, Saurashtra in Gujarat and Coorg in Karnataka. A senior Home Ministry official said the demands were mostly received from organisations like Telengana Rashtra Samiti and Gorkha Janamukti Morcha and some other organisations and individuals. The most vocal organisation TRS has placed its demand for creation of Telengana state, comprising Telengana region in Andhra Pradesh, a few years back while the GJM has been putting pressure to carve out Gorkhaland state out of Darjeeling and its adjoining areas in West Bengal. The demand for creation of Bundelkhand state, comprising districts like Banda, Chitrakoot, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Sagar of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have been pending for long with the ministry, the official said, adding, though no state Government has given any recommendation, which is mandatory for carving out a new state, the demands continue to pour in.
MY TAKE
With a weak polity, all we need are the Brits to come back and kick us out of our nationalist slumber ! After all if smaller states combined to become bigger states, whose #^%#^% idea is it to break bigger into smaller ones ? What next, break India into smaller countries ? Is it the answer Mr. PM ??
