States and territories of India

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India is subdivided into twenty-nine states and six union territories.

Contents

1 History

1.1 Pre-independence

1.1.1 Provinces

2 After 1956
3 See also
4 External links

History

Pre-independence

British India, which included all of modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan, but not Ceylon, Nepal or Sikkim, was made up of two types of territorial divisions, provinces and Princely States.

Provinces

After 1956

The former French and Portuguese colonies in India were incorporated into the Indian Republic as the union territories of Pondicherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and 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 May 1 1960 by the Bombay Reorganisation Act. The Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966 divided the Punjab along linguistic and religious lines, creating a new Hindu and Hindi-speaking state of Haryana, transferring the northern districts of Punjab to Himachal Pradesh, and designating Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, a union territory. Nagaland was made a state in 1962, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh in 1971, and Tripura and Manipur in 1972. Arunachal Pradesh was made a union territory in 1972. The Kingdom of Sikkim was annexed to India as a state in 1975. Mizoram was made a state in 1986, and Goa and Arunachal Pradesh in 1987, while Goa's northern exclaves of Daman and Diu became a separate union territory. In 2000 three new states were created; Jharkhand was created out of the southern districts of Bihar, Chhattisgarh was created out of eastern Madhya Pradesh, and Uttaranchal was created out of northwestern Uttar Pradesh.

External links