States Reorganisation Commission

The States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was constituted by the Government of India on 29 December 1953 under the chairmanship of Justice Fazl Ali, with H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar as its members. It was appointed in response to mounting demands for the redrawing of provincial boundaries along linguistic lines, demands that had intensified after the death of Potti Sriramulu in December 1952 following a 56-day fast for a separate Telugu-speaking state, which compelled Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to concede Andhra State in October 1953. The SRC succeeded the earlier, more cautious enquiries — the Dar Commission (S. K. Dar, 1948), which had warned against linguistic reorganisation, and the JVP Committee (Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, 1949), which echoed those reservations. The SRC submitted its report on 30 September 1955.

The Commission's terms of reference asked it to weigh both the unity and security of India and the linguistic and cultural homogeneity of areas. While it accepted language as an important basis, it expressly rejected the principle of "one language, one state" and balanced linguistic considerations against administrative convenience, financial viability, national security, and the preservation of national unity. The SRC recommended the abolition of the existing fourfold classification of Part A, Part B, Part C and Part D states established by the original Constitution and proposed the creation of 16 states and 3 centrally administered territories. Parliament enacted the bulk of its recommendations through the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, accompanied by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, which abolished the Part A–D distinction and established 14 states and 6 union territories with effect from 1 November 1956.

Among the SRC's notable outcomes were the formation of Kerala (uniting Malayalam-speaking areas with Travancore-Cochin), the enlargement of Mysore (later Karnataka), and the creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 by merging Andhra State with the Telugu-speaking areas of Hyderabad. The Commission declined, however, to bifurcate the bilingual Bombay State, recommending it remain a composite unit — a refusal that triggered the Samyukta Maharashtra and Mahagujarat agitations and led, in 1960, to the separate creation of Maharashtra and Gujarat under the Bombay Reorganisation Act. The reorganisation process the SRC began continued for decades, through the creation of Punjab and Haryana (1966), the north-eastern states under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, and later Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand (2000) and Telangana (2014).

For the UPSC examination, the SRC is a staple of the post-independence consolidation theme in the GS Paper I syllabus ("post-independence consolidation and reorganization within the country") and recurs in Prelims questions on the Dar–JVP–SRC sequence, the 1956 Act, and the Seventh Amendment. Examiners typically test the chronology (Dar 1948 → JVP 1949 → Andhra 1953 → SRC 1955 → Act 1956), the names of the three members, and the SRC's explicit rejection of linguistic exclusivity. Mains answers frequently ask candidates to assess whether linguistic reorganisation strengthened or threatened national unity — making the SRC's balancing rationale directly quotable.