Tamil Nadu govt announces trifucation of Vellore district

Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Edappadi K Palaniswami announced that Vellore district of state would be trifurcated into Vellore, Ranipet and Tirupattur districts. Vellore will be headquarters of these 2 new districts. With creation of two more districts the total number of districts in state would become 37.

The Chief Minister also announced that starting from 2019, November 1 would be celebrated as Tamil Nadu Day to commemorate state’s creation day. Tamil Nadu was created on November 1, 1956.

Key Highlights

In any state the idea behind creating new districts is, generally, that it is expected to make governance easier or sometimes, decision is driven by local demands. In this case, people had been demanding carving out of new districts from Vellore district, which has 13 assembly segments.

Vellore District: It was created in 1989 by bifurcating North Arcot district into Vellore and Tiruvannamalai districts. It is one of the largest districts in state by area and has 13 Assembly constituencies. It is divided between 3 Lok Sabha constituencies- Vellore, Tiruvannamalai and Arakkonam.

Other District Division: In 2018 Tamil Nadu state government had carved out Kallakurichi district from Villupuram district. . In July 2019, TN govenment announced its decision to carve out Tenkasi district from Tirunelveli district and Chengalpet district from Kancheepuram district.

District in India

In India larger states have a higher number of districts such as Uttar Pradesh leads the count with 75 district, followed by Madhya Pradesh (52), while smallest state, Goa (2), has lowest number.

However, number of districts in a state is not always a function of area of state (or of its population). For example, Andhra Pradesh is 7th largest state by area in the country but has among smallest counts of districts at 13. As such, it has only 1 district for every 12,000 sq-km, which is largest average size for a district in any Indian state.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2019