After Telangana, increased pressure to give birth to 12 new states in India
by CT Nilesh
The central government announced a Commission to study the requests. Separatist Movements are fighting for Gorkhaland in northern West Bengal, Vidarbha in eastern Maharashtra, Harit Pradesh, Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal, from Uttar Pradesh. Other requests come from Gujarat, Karnataka and Assam. Meanwhile it is still difficult the birth of Telangana.
Mumbai (AsiaNews) - After the announcement of giving way to the new state of Telangana, many autonomist movements have revived their old request for new states.
On 9 December the Indian government announced its intention to begin the procedure for dividing the state of Andhra Pradesh in two. (see AsiaNews.it, 12/10/2009 Telangana, a new Indian state, is given go ahead ) .
The first act in this process should have been a resolution of the Andhra legislative assembly for this purpose. But that was not possible since half of the local legislators resigned in protest and the local legislative body could not be convened. Meanwhile, many movements have been awakened to demand autonomy and a new state for them. Among these, there is the movement of Gorkhaland always very assertive and threatening violent demonstrations.
To gain time, the central government is ventilating the idea of establishing a States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) to evaluate the different demands, to interview all the concerned parties and to establish some criteria for defining new states.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Telangana movement, K. Chandrashekar Rao, who with his fast-unto death obtained the first decision of the Indian Government, tired of waiting, has announced an indefinite strike from tomorrow, December 29, if the central government does not spell out a time frame by this evening.
So far requests have been raised for a dozen new member: Gorkhaland in the north of West Bengal; Vidarbha the eastern part of Maharashtra; Harit Pradesh, Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal three regions of Uttar Pradesh (UP). The interesting thing is that the same Chief Minister of UP, Mayavati, is the most enthusiastic proponent of the partition of her state. After all, UP is the most populous state of India and it has already been divided in the year 2000, when three new states had been created: Uttharakhand from UP, Jharkhand from Bihar and Chhattisgarh from Madhya Pradesh.
Also the states of Karnataka, Gujarat and Assam have regions who would like to become states.
If the second SRC is finally constituted, it would mark another step in the direction of redrawing the political map of India after the submission of the first SRC report in 1955. That report had led to the formation of the southern states on the basis of language while Gujarat was carved out of Maharashtra. The SRC will be expected to look thoroughly into the legitimacy of demands for new states.
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