Article 1(1) of the constitution of India says that “India, that is Bharat, shall be Union of States”.
The
word Union was deliberately chosen in place of Federation to indicate that Indian Union is not the
result of an agreement between states {which can be broken at whim} and its component states
have no freedom to secede from it. Thus, while states can be broken, reorganized by alternation of
boundaries, the country is a union which cannot be broken. Central Government can change the
name, boundaries of the states without their permission also. That is why Dr. B R Ambedkar called
India as an “indestructible Union of destructible states“.
Creation of New States
The First schedule of the constitution has the list of all the states and union territories. A new state
in India can be created by three different means as follows:
Breaking / reorganizing an existing state(s)
Giving status of full-fledged state to a union territory
Acquiring a new territory
Breaking / reorganizing an existing state(s)
Article 3 empowers the parliament to create new states and alter the areas, boundaries or names of
existing States by making suitable law.
Giving status of full-fledged state to a union territory
A union territory may be upgraded to a full-fledged state by making suitable law in parliament.
Acquiring a new Territory
Being a sovereign state, India like other sovereign states has inherent power to acquire the new
territories. This implies that whenever a new territory is acquired (by war, international agreements
etc) there is no need to make a law. However, its formal assimilation into the union has to be done
by parliament by making suitable legislation as per Article 2.
Thus, all the three means to admit new states in Union need a law by the parliament. Such
legislation of law also follows suitable changes in the First schedule of the constitution. However,
such changes don’t amount to be called as Constitution amendments (article 4)
Procedure of changing a name of state
Process for changing the name of a state can be initiated by state itself. However, by virtue of article
3, the parliament has power to change the name of a state even if such proposal does not come
from the concerned state.
If initiated by state assembly
The state assembly would first pass a resolution for such change and this passed resolution would be
sent to central government. Central Government will create a bill and this bill will be sent back to the
state legislature to express its views in a stipulated time. The state legislature will need to give its
views within this time as fixed by president. Once this time is expired, the president will recommend
to intrduce that bill in parliament. Once introduced, the bill will be passed, and president would give
assent. Thus, the name of state would be changed. The example of such change is change in name of
Orissa to Odisha. The Government of Orissa initiated this change in 2008 when it forwarded a
resolution passed by the Legislative Assembly of Orissa to central government to change the name
of state from Orissa to Odisha. This bill was passed as Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act, 2010.
Without a proposal of state
Article 3 empowers the parliament make changes in area, boundaries, territory, name of states even
if such proposal does not come from the concerned state. For this purpose, the central government
can simply get a bill passed in the parliament. However, constitution mandates that whenever such
things need to be done, states must be given an opportunity to express their views. Thus, first
central government will create a bill, but this bill can be introduced in parliament only by
recommendation of the president. Before making such recommendation, President would send this
bill to concerned state legislature and give it a fixed time to express its view on that matter.
However, state’s view has no actual impact for fate of such bill. Whether the state says yes or no,
once the time given to it has passed, the President may recommend the bill to be introduced in any
house of parliament. Once passed the name of state gets changed.
Thus, we can conclude that:
Alternation of names, boundaries etc. of states is a prerogative of parliament and parliament has
final say on this matter.
Such a bill is introduced in parliament by prior recommendation of president {because states’
interests may be involved here}
States are asked to express their views in stipulated time but practically their view does not matter.
Once that time is expired, parliament can enact the law even if they say no.
Legal process of ceding a territory to other country
Every country has some border disputes. Such disputes are solved by diplomacy or bargaining or by
war. The process of forming news states and admitting new territories in the Union and the process
of ceding territory to another country, both are done under article 3 however, the process of later is
different from former. This difference arose due to the Supreme Court verdict in the Berubari Union
case whereby the court mandated that Parliament of India is not competent enough to cede a
territory. However, to make such an agreement effective, Parliament would need to enact an
amendment of the Constitution. So, whenever India ceded a territory, parliament has amended the
constitution. As a recent example, the recent Land Boundary Act between India and Bangladesh
resulted in ceding some Indian territory to Bangladesh, and acquiring some Bangladeshi territory by
India. For ceding the territory, India needed to enact the 100th Constitutional Amendment Act.
