States Reorganisation Act, 1956

The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 was a parliamentary statute enacted under Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution that fundamentally redrew India's political map along predominantly linguistic lines. At independence, the Constitution (First Schedule, as originally framed) had classified provinces into four categories — Part A States (former Governor's provinces), Part B States (former princely states under a Rajpramukh), Part C States (Chief Commissioner's provinces and some princely states), and the lone Part D territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This patchwork inheritance was the product of administrative convenience rather than coherent principle, and demands for linguistic provinces — promised by the Congress as early as the 1920 Nagpur session — gathered force after 1947. The Act gave statutory effect to the recommendations of the Fazl Ali Commission (States Reorganisation Commission, 1953–55), whose other members were H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar.

The immediate trigger was the agitation in the Telugu-speaking regions of Madras State, where Potti Sriramulu died on 16 December 1952 after a 56-day fast for a separate Andhra province; Andhra State was created in October 1953, becoming the first State formed on a linguistic basis. The government then appointed the SRC, which rejected the demand for a single Telugu unit incorporating Hyderabad but broadly endorsed linguistic reorganisation while cautioning against "one language one state." The Fazl Ali Commission identified four factors — preservation of national unity, linguistic and cultural homogeneity, financial and administrative viability, and the success of national Five-Year Plans. The Act, together with the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, abolished the Part A–D scheme, substituting a simpler distinction between States and Union Territories, and redrew the First and Fourth Schedules accordingly. It created 14 States and 6 Union Territories, and integrated the institution of Rajpramukh out of existence, with Governors heading all States.

The Act left several questions unresolved. The bilingual Bombay State combining Marathi and Gujarati speakers triggered the Samyukta Maharashtra and Mahagujarat movements, leading to the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960, which split it into Maharashtra and Gujarat on 1 May 1960. Punjab's bifurcation into Punjab and Haryana followed in 1966. The linguistic principle continued to drive later reorganisations, while the 2014 carving of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh and the 2019 reconstitution of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories show that Article 3 remains a living instrument. As of 2026, India comprises 28 States and 8 Union Territories.

For the UPSC examination, the Act is core to both GS Paper I (post-independence consolidation) and GS Paper II (Indian polity — federalism and Article 3). Examiners frequently test the sequence — Dhar Commission (1948) and JVP Committee (1949) which initially opposed linguistic states, the Andhra precedent, the Fazl Ali Commission, and the Act itself. A recurring prelims angle asks which State was first formed on a linguistic basis (Andhra, 1953) and the year linguistic reorganisation was generalised (1956); a mains angle probes whether linguistic reorganisation strengthened or threatened national unity, inviting a balanced argument citing the failure of fissiparous predictions against persistent sub-regional demands.