“Political will and Parliament Bill are enough for formation of Mithila State as per the Constitutional procedures and requirements. Neither the consent of Bihar Assembly, nor the Amendment to the Constitution is required for carving out a new territory from the boundaries of present Bihar and Jharkhand.”[1]
The Constitution in Article 3 vests the power to form new States and alteration of areas, boundaries, or names of existing States in Parliament alone which may pass the law on the subject. The Bill for the purpose can be introduced in either House of Parliament on the recommendation of the President which in fact means recommendation of the Union Government as the President acts on the advice of the Union Government.
The Constitution, however, is silent on the subject of the criteria for forming States doing nothing more than giving the power of formation of States to Parliament. While giving power exclusively to Parliament may be conducive to the integrity and unity of India, it gives no guidance to Parliament or a body created by Parliament as to the principles for the formation of States. This brings out the basic deficiencies in the Constitution of our Republic which is often lauded for having stood the test of time but which in fact leaves several important aspects untouched.
The only attempt in the pre-independence days to provide a logical basis for the formation of States was the Motilal Nehru Committee Report[2] of 1928 which recommended the formation of States on a linguistic basis. Major languages provide the cultural base of the life of the Indian people and should be the appropriate base for State formation, it asserted.
This principle was accepted by the major party in the forefront of the fight of the Indian people for independence, namely, the Indian National Congress. Even in the pre-independence days, the regional committees of the Congress were formed on the basis of linguistic areas. Thus the four Kannad speaking districts in Bombay province went with the Congress Committee for Karnataka covering the rest of the Kannad region. The British rulers, having no use of the culture of the Indian people, had constituted large provinces purely on the administrative criteria. There were the three major ‘regulated provinces’ of Bombay, Madras and Bengal with the major cities of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta as their headquarters. The Bombay province stretched from Sindh to Gujarat, Western Maharashtra and Northern Karnatak districts. In 1935 Sindh was separated to become an independent province. The Madras province covered the Tamil land, Rayalaseema and coastal Telugu areas and the Karnataka districts of South Canara. The Bengal province once covered the whole of Eastern India. Later Assam, Bihar and in 1935 Orissa became independent provinces. As British rule extended, new provinces were formed. The United Province covered the vast Ganga-Yamuna area stretching from the Himalayan regions of Garhwal and Kumaon to the planes of Brijbhoomi, Bundelkhand to Lucknow, Banaras and Allahabad. The Central Province consisted of both Marathi (Vidarbha) and Hindi (Mahakoshal) areas with the capital Nagpur and also included the largest Bastar district and other tribal areas. Punjab in the Northwest covered the whole of Punjab (Western now in Pakistan and Eastern in India) including the hilly areas and Hindi speaking Haryana.[3]
THE LEGAL PROVISIONS
Laws regarding this issue have been clearly laid down in Article 2 and Article 3 of the Indian Constitution. Article 2 reads as, “Admission or establishment of new States.—Parliament may by law admit into the Union, or establish, new States on such terms and conditions as it thinks fit”.[4]
When the writers of Constitution were drafting Article 3, our nation was not fully integrated or well organized as some Princely States were not included and States Reorganization Commission was working on forming linguistic states. Keeping in view the need for formation of new states, an enabling provision giving power to the Parliament was incorporated in Article 3. For this purpose the Constitution provided a simple and easy process for ‘reorganizing’ a new state. Article 3 says that Parliament can enact a law to reorganize the existing states by separating new state out of territories of the existing states, or by uniting two or more states or parts of states, or by uniting any territory to a part of any state, or by altering their boundaries, or by separating territory from, or increasing or diminishing the area of, or by changing the name of, a state. If the Parliament acts as per these provisions of the Constitution, it will automatically effect a change in the Schedules, without necessitating a separate Constitutional Amendment. The Bill approved by the Parliament would change those schedules to suit the new state. Hence Constitutional Amendment is also not required.[5]
निर्माता
- राहुल ठाकुर
