Creation of new states

Creation of new states

Topic: Indian polity

Context:

Months ahead of Assembly elections in their states, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his Uttarakhand counterpart Pushkar Singh Dhami recently reached an agreement on the division of assets and liabilities, a subject the two states have discussed and debated ever since Uttarakhand was carved out of UP 21 years ago.

Concept:

• Indian constitution empowers the Union government to create new states out of existing states or two merge one state with other. This process is called reorganisation of the states.
• The basis of reorganisation could be linguistic, religious, ethnic or administrative.
• Article 3 provides the following procedure:
• Presidential reference is sent to State Assembly.
• After presidential reference, a resolution is tabled and passed in Assembly.
• Assembly has to pass a Bill creating the new State/States.
• A separate Bill has to be ratified by Parliament.