Rise in districts: Is political demand overshadowing administrative need?

New districts are being announced more because of demands by influential groups than empirical studies, usually in the buildup to elections

With civic polls in the state round the corner, the Haryana government has announced that it would carve out at least four new districts, including the industrial town of Manesar, which is currently part of the Gurugram district. A Cabinet minister-headed committee will evaluate demands for creation of new districts and submit its report within two months.

Creating new districts is the prerogative of state governments, and can be done by either an administrative order or passing a law in the state Assembly. State governments usually opt for the former. It is as yet not known if the committee in Haryana will follow any objective criteria, such as geographical area or population density. Recent experience shows state governments announce creation of new districts because of demands by influential groups rather than based on empirical studies and specific parameters.

Announcements about creating new districts have lately taken place in the runup to the Assembly elections. As elections neared in Rajasthan in December 2023, the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government created 17 new districts, taking the total in the state to 50. In April 2022, the YSR Congress Party-run Andhra Pradesh government created 13 new districts. The southern state, bifurcated in 2014, now has 26.

In Madhya Pradesh, in his last Cabinet meeting before the December 2023 Assembly polls, the then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan created two districts, Maihar from Satna and Pandhurna from Chhindwara. His government had carved out the Mauganj district in 2023 by redrawing the boundaries of the Rewa district. Now, current CM Mohan Yadav has set up a three-member Madhya Pradesh Administrative Unit Reformation Commission to study the geographical boundaries and population density of the state’s districts, blocks, and tehsils and redraw them based on objective criteria.

In an interview to Business Standard last week, Yadav said, “There have been several political demands to create new districts, tehsils, and blocks, and some of which are acceded to but without any heed to the geographical area and population of these administrative units.”

Pointing to the stark disparity in the sizes and populations of the districts, Yadav said, “We have districts with a population of 4 million and there are others with just 500,000. There could be minor differences between the area and population of districts, but not to such an extent. All of these are leading to administrative inefficiency and hamper development work.” He said Madhya Pradesh was the first state to feel the need to rationalise this and set up a commission. 

The spike

The 13 years since the 2011 Census have witnessed the sharpest increase in the number of districts carved out since India’s independence (see chart). Several more are in the offing, such as the five new districts in the Union Territory of Ladakh, already announced but yet to be notified. When notified, it will take the number of districts in Ladakh from two to seven.

States carved out in recent years have led the race to demarcate new districts. Telangana’s districts have increased from the 10 it inherited at the time of its creation in 2014 to 33. In the bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, districts have gone up from 13 to 26, in Uttarakhand from nine to 13, in Jharkhand from 18 to 24, and in Chhattisgarh from 16 to 33.

Former Election Commissioner of India, Ashok Lavasa, a 1980-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of Haryana cadre, has written on the need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of existing districts. He says when he joined the service, Haryana had seven districts, which have now increased to 22. But, as in other states, it is not as if the districts with bigger geographical areas or highest population were split.

“The creation of a new district, essentially an administrative unit, does not seem to follow any rational principle. There are no defined geographical or demographic criteria for the creation of a district,” Lavasa told Business Standard.

A study published earlier this year and led by Prof. Shivakumar Jolad, Faculty of Public Policy, FLAME University, analysed the wide variations in the parameters followed in creating new districts. Kachchh, the largest district in India, has an area of 45,674 sq km and a population of 2,092,371. At the other end of the spectrum, Mahe, in Puducherry, is the smallest district with an area of 8.69 sq km and a population of 41,816 (2011 Census). North 24 Parganas in West Bengal is the most populated (10,009,781 people) and Arunachal’s Dibang Valley the least (8,004 people).

The Leh district in the UT of Ladakh has a population of 133,487, with an area of 45,110 sq km. The population of the UT’s only other district, Kargil, is 140,802, with an area of 14,086 sq km. The Centre in August announced the creation of five new districts in the UT.

Lavasa says the geographical demarcation and population are not clear from the announcement of their birth, and shares a family joke. He says that when his daughter was the district magistrate of Leh a few years ago, she would tell him that the district she headed was bigger than the entire state of Haryana where he had served. “A five-hour drive in any direction from Leh city would still keep you in the same district, but a mere three-hour drive from the centre of Haryana would take you outside the state boundaries,” he says.

Way ahead

Jolad’s study says creating new districts does not always lead to decentralisation, since panchayats and urban local bodies are not adequately empowered. He suggests that in creation of new districts criteria, such as demographic indicators, social and historical parameters should be followed by a dedicated entity, accountable to the people, which should review proposals.

Lavasa says a new district entails additional manpower, construction of new office and residential buildings, and the attendant setup, such as posting senior officers -- these take time, and at times the upgrade is neither needed nor possible because of budgetary constraints. Moreover, he says, with the advent of technology-driven governance, it could be more judicious to delegate authority.

The setting up of the MP Administrative Unit Reformation Commission, he says, was a welcome move and expresses the hope that it would base its recommendations on objective and rational parameters. He also says that cost-benefit analyses should be conducted of the existing districts.

In conversation with Business Standard: Prof. Shivakumar Jolad, Faculty of Public Policy, FLAME University.