PM IAS APRIL 07 EDITORIAL

Reorganising Andhra Pradesh: districts to match LS constituencies

GS 2, State Legislature, Regionalism, Diversity, Federalism.

Context:
The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh launched 13 new districts with the goal of bringing administration to the people’s doorsteps. The plan was to provide one district to each Lok Sabha seat.

State Reorganization Act:

• The State Reorganization Acts were passed in November 2000 to reorganise the then-existing states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar.
• As a consequence, Uttar Pradesh was divided into UP and Uttarakhand, MP was divided into MP and Chhattisgarh, while Bihar was reformed into Bihar and Jharkhand.
• According to the terms of the three Acts, the Central Government has the competence to allocate human services between the successor States in conjunction with the State Re-organisation.

Background of the Act:

1. The Indian states were founded as a result of historical events and circumstances.
2. Following independence, there has been a growing desire for more rational state reorganisation, not just in the context of independent India’s financial, economic, and administrative administration, but also due to the growing prominence of regional languages.

Classification of main types of states:

• Part A states
• Part B states
• Part C States
• Part D state

Part A states.

1. British India’s past governors’ provinces
2. These states were governed by a governor who was chosen by the people and a state legislature.
3. Part A states included Bombay, Madras, Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (formerly Central Provinces and Berar), Punjab (previously East Punjab), Uttar Pradesh (previously the United Provinces), Orissa, and West Bengal.

States in Part B

1. Former princely states or clusters of princely states
2. A Rajpramukh administered these states.
3. Rajpramukh is the monarch of a constituent state with a democratically elected assembly.
4. He was appointed by India’s President.
5. Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU), Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, and Travancore-Cochin were the five Part B states. Madhya Pradesh, Mysore, Rajasthan, and Saurashtra are the states involved.

States in Part C

1. It included the provinces of the former chief commissioners as well as several princely realms.
2. A chief commissioner controlled these states.
3. The President of India appointed the chief commissioner.
4. Ajmer, Bhopal, Bilaspur, Coorg, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Cutch, Manipur, Tripura, and Vindhya Pradesh were the four Part C states.

States in Part D

1. The federal government chose a lieutenant governor to lead this state.
2. Part D is made up of simply the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
3. The States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was established for the first time in 1953 to investigate the subject and offer principles and general recommendations for reorganising the States.
4. In September 1955, the Commission issued its report. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956, was adopted by Parliament under Article 4 of the Indian Constitution to give effect to the reorganisation scheme that arose from the examination of the ideas included in the Report.
5. Andhra Pradesh, Bombay Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Madras, Mysore, Punjab, and Rajasthan are the new states founded as a result of state rearrangement in 1956.
6. Following that, the Parliament adopted other Reorganisation Acts, including the Bombay Reorganisation Act in 1960, the Punjab Reorganisation Act in 1966, the State of Himachal Pradesh Reorganisation Act in 1970, and the North-Eastern States Reorganisation Act in 1971. The Reorganisation Acts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar, enacted by the Parliament in November 2000, are the most recent in this category.
7. The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act of 2014 was passed.
8. Andhra Pradesh’s bifurcation obtained President’s consent on March 1, 2014. The Act compels the State of Andhra Pradesh to undertake actions connected to the establishment of successor states, such as dividing assets, obligations, workers, contracts, and so on between the two successor states.

The Reason for Reorganization:

• The desire for state rearrangement is sometimes associated with the desire for linguistic province establishment.
• This is because the drive for the redistribution of British Indian provinces arose directly as a result of the extraordinary growth of regional languages in the nineteenth century.
• This resulted in the emotional integration of disparate linguistic groups as well as the creation of a sense of unique cultural units among them.
• When progressive public opinion in India shifted in favour of administrative unit rationalisation, the aim was thought of and pursued in terms of linguistically homogenous units.
• Through the restructuring of state boundaries, an area attempts to raise itself to the level of a state, where they feel they will be able to enjoy the powers and amenities that they believe they have been denied.
• Growing awareness among ethnic minorities, as well as a perception that they share similar qualities that set them apart from the dominant group within the state
• Because minorities are geographically limited, it is simpler to concentrate their demand.
• Anxious ethnic minority populations have a perception of discrimination.
• Because protesting districts are generally economically underdeveloped, people create a perception of being overlooked by the state government’s majority-dominated majority.
• The protesting sub-regional communities assert that they have fewer opportunities than the rest of the state’s population.
• When such movements are headed by an effective and powerful leader, they develop traction.

Provisions of the Constitution:

• The Indian constitution gives the Union government the authority to establish new states from existing ones or to combine two states into one. This is referred to as state reorganisation.
• Reorganization might be based on linguistic, religious, ethnic, or administrative grounds.

Article 3 lays forth the following procedure:

• The Presidential referral has been forwarded to the State Assembly.
• Following the presidential referral, a resolution is tabled and passed in the Assembly.
• The Assembly must enact legislation to establish the new state/states.
• A separate Bill must be approved by Parliament.

Related Issues and Motives:

• The entire fight entails constant negotiation on the side of minorities in particular and regions in general with the centre on the one hand and the state on the other.
• The areas that have demanded border splitting from their parent states accuse the central government of ignoring their request.
• If their desire for a new state is granted, the people of the parent state begin to blame the union government for the entire process.
• The states from which the demands of new states originate have been unfavourable to them, for a variety of reasons-
• It demonstrates the state government’s failure to address the issue of pervasive regional inequality.
• Failure to give welfare and equal chances to the whole population of the state.
• Furthermore, bifurcation would imply the split of financial resources, water resources, assets, natural resources, and so on.
• As a result, the state’s bifurcation would have a significant impact on the state’s economy.
• Such a divide would also have an influence on the state’s bargaining leverage at the centre.
• In India, the number of seats allotted to states is determined by their population size. The division of the population would have a negative influence on the number of MPs elected to the union government.

WAY FORWARD

• Economic and social soundness must take precedence above political reasons.
• Parent claims that any losses in physical and human capital would be properly compensated.
• There should be defined limitations and protections in place to keep unbridled demands in control.
• It is preferable to allow democratic considerations like as development, decentralisation, and governance to be viable reasons for accepting requests for a new state rather than religion, caste, language, or dialect.
• The basic challenges of development and governance deficiency, such as power consolidation, corruption, and inefficiency in administration, must be addressed.