Name and Territory of the Union

Article 1: Name and territory of the Union

(1) India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.

(2) The States and the territories thereof shall be as specified in the First Schedule.

(3) The territory of India shall comprise—

(a) the territories of the States;

(b) the Union territories specified in the First Schedule; and

(c) such other territories as may be acquired

Article 1(1) of the constitution of India says that “India, that is Bharat, shall be Union of States”. Though the term “federation’ has been used in context with India, yet technically, Federation is not a result of agreement between the units of which it is made up of. By the term “Union” we simply mean that the units of Indian federation have no freedom to recede from it. The moment princely states signed the instrument of accession; they closed the door to come out of this union.

In the constituent assembly, some people were not happy with the term “Union”. They wanted the constituent assembly to use the word “federation”. The idea was rejected because most of the British Indian provinces were NOT sovereign (they were not more than being Autonomous Units). Moreover, constitution derives its power from the Public of India so Federal system is a result of Indian people’s wish and so no state once acceded had the freedom to secede.

The Article 1(3) mentions that the territory of India comprises the state territories, union territories and any such other territory Government of India acquires at any time. Here you may ask a question that does the Article 1(3) (C) expressly gives the power to Government of India to acquire new territories?

The answer is no. It does not mean that, but the preamble of Constitution of India declares that India is an independent and sovereign country. A sovereign country has “inherent” right to acquire a foreign territory, it does not need to be explicitly mentioned. That also means that there is no need to enact any parliamentary legislation to acquire a new territory.

Further, a question arises that who are members of Union of India? Are they states, or UTs, or both? By virtue of Article 1(1), only states are members of the Union of India.