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Abstract

According to the Article 1 of the Indian constitution, India is a union of states. It is also well-known fact that at the time of independence in 1947, India consisted of 571 disjointed princely states and the grouping of states at the time was done on the basis of political and historical considerations rather than on linguistic or cultural divisions, but this was a temporary arrangement. Consequently the demand for separate statehood were raised from time to time on account of the multilingual nature and differences that existed between various states, there was a need for the states to be reorganized on a permanent basis. In this perspective, in 1953 the first linguistic state of Andhra for Telugu-speaking people was born. After that on the basis of the recommendations of linguistic commission Bombay was as important state divided into Gujarat and Maharashtra. The process continued and in 2014 Telnagana was formed as a new state and the total number of the states reached at 29. But in August 2019 Jammu and Kashmir was divided into two union territories and thus, presently, India has 28 states and 9 union territories. Moreover, demand for Harit Pradesh, Bundelkhand, Gorkhaland etc. is in process on the behalf of the respective communities. In future, the number of states and union territories may increase. Moreover, there are some challenges ahead and for the sake of the unity of the state it is urgently required that centre government should make every effort to pacify demand of separate state. The present research paper makes a review of the re-organization of the states in Indian federalism and also points out some challenges in the way of federal system.

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