Sardar Panikkar’s view prevailed at SRC, but the Commission refrained from recommending the partition of the politically sensitive state of the union. Nehru too did not want his home state to be split because both he and Pant drew political support from UP which had the largest number of seats (86) in the 499-member Lok Sabha and 31 in the Rajya Sabha, having a strength of 216 at that time. Needless to say that the Congress returned overwhelming majority of its members in the two houses from the state.

By way of background Pant was considered the right hand man of Nehru. He was the powerful Home Minister in the Union Cabinet when the states were reorganised on linguistic basis and hailed from Kumaon region where, paradoxically, the demand for creation of a separate hill state had its epicentre. UP has been ultimately split and Uttarakhand created. When the SRC was appointed in 1953, Pant was the Chief Minister of UP; the first to head the most populous state of the union.

Over half a century after Pant and Nehru prevented division of UP for political reasons, Chief Minister, Mayawati, also for political reasons, wants the state to be divided into four smaller states. Her cabinet even passed a resolution to that effect but the four-way split is by no means a done deal. Mayawati’s action, evidently, is a desperate move as she is unlikely to repeat her performance of 2007, when her party got a comfortably majority in the assembly. Also rampant corruption and, squandering away public money, has brought her image to a low ebb. Evidently, she personally, and her administration, are regarded as most corrupt and this will adversely affect her party’s electoral prospects.

The question repeatedly asked is why has she not spoken of the virtues of the smaller states in her previous tenure and four years of the present rule ? Now with the elections looming large in few months, she has sprung this surprise as a poll strategy. But she is lacking support of opposition parties. Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi party has already said that it will oppose tooth and nail the four-way division of UP, while the BJP is undecided. Others, including the Congress, are non-committal.

Reorganisation of a state must be approved by Parliament, and it is highly unlikely that this would happen in immediate future. Mayawati knows this, but her objective, apparently, is to seize the initiative. One wonders if she will succeed?. What concerns the people is the rampart corruption that affects them in day-to-day life than the four-way split of the state. Absence of governance will still play a crucial role when voters go to cast their vote. Pace of life has not improved for the people, particularly the dalits, whose cause she championed. The mammoth statues she has erected across the state may be powerful visual symbols of dalit assertion but it is not enough for those who want to see their lives improve in real terms.

Mayawati’s diversionary tactics, however, has real implications beyond UP. All movements across the country demanding creation of smaller states will get a boost, and nowhere more so than in Andhra Pradesh. The agitation for separate Telangana has just about subsided; now it gets another lease of life. National parties like Congress and the BJP must offer a consistent response to different demands to carve up the larger states; they cannot support one state and oppose another.

Does India need second reorganisation of states? Can the boundaries of the union be redrawn in a piecemeal manner to assuage the aspirations of a region while others having a stronger case be ignored? And, most importantly, what would be the fall out in other regions?

It will be in fitting with things to consider constitution of a mini states reorganisation commission to suggest adjustment of the boundaries of U.P, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh in keeping with the electoral promise of both the BJP and the Congress and also examine the question of carving out the Vidarbha state, as recommended by the SRC in 1956. The second mini SRC can also examine the feasibility of creating new states in other regions too to correct the regional imbalance if the situation so warrants.

Times have vastly since Jayaprakash Narayan and Kanshi Ram propounded the thesis that small states ensure faster development and better governance. With the development of information technology and rapid communication system, the concept of small states has become redundant. Recent experience has shown that smaller states are engulfed by instability, resulting in slowing down of development activity and poor governance. The bigger states are politically more stable, better governed and development too is faster. (IPA)