Dhar Commission: JVP Committee, Fazl Ali Report and Linguistic States
Dhar Commission explained: what the Dhar inquiry, the JVP Committee and the Fazl Ali Commission recommended, and how the 1956 map of states followed.
The Dhar Commission was the first official inquiry into whether independent India should redraw its provinces by language. Appointed in June 1948 by the President of the Constituent Assembly and chaired by a retired Allahabad High Court judge, S. K. Dar, it said no. Two more bodies followed: the JVP Committee of the Congress in 1949 and the Fazl Ali Commission, formally the States Reorganisation Commission, which reported in 1955 and set up the map that took effect on 1 November 1956.
Most readers carry one wrong picture: that these three bodies marched steadily towards linguistic states. They didn’t. The Dhar Commission rejected language as the main test, the JVP Committee asked for a pause, and even the Fazl Ali Commission refused the idea of “one language one state”. What moved the map was a fast in Madras State in 1952, and Parliament’s final Act of 1956 then departed from the commission in several places. This note keeps the three bodies apart and follows each recommendation to what actually happened.
Dhar Commission, JVP Committee and Fazl Ali Commission at a Glance
The three bodies were appointed by different authorities, answered different questions and reached different verdicts. The table puts them side by side.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Dhar Commission (Linguistic Provinces Commission) | Appointed 17 June 1948 by the President of the Constituent Assembly; report signed 10 December 1948 |
| Dhar Commission members | S. K. Dar (chairman), Panna Lall and Jagat Narain Lal |
| Dhar Commission verdict | Provinces on “exclusively or even mainly linguistic” lines not in the national interest |
| JVP Committee | Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, set up by the Jaipur Congress; report dated 1 April 1949 |
| Andhra State | Formed on 1 October 1953 under the Andhra State Act, 1953 |
| Fazl Ali Commission (States Reorganisation Commission) | Fazl Ali (chairman), H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar; appointed 29 December 1953; report signed 30 September 1955 |
| Fazl Ali Commission proposal | 16 States and 3 centrally administered territories |
| Outcome | States Reorganisation Act, 1956 and the Seventh Amendment, in force from 1 November 1956: 14 States and 6 Union territories |
Why Independent India Needed a Commission on Linguistic Provinces
The short answer is that the Congress had promised linguistic provinces for decades and then hesitated once it was in power. The provinces it inherited were British administrative units, drawn by conquest and convenience, so Madras held Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada speakers under one government and Bombay held Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada speakers.
The Congress had already accepted the principle inside its own organization. From its Nagpur session of 1920, the party organized its provincial committees by language rather than by British provinces. The JVP report itself records that the Congress ran separate committees for Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and a separate Bombay City committee, long before any of these existed as provinces.
Partition changed the calculation. In 1947 and 1948 the new government was absorbing hundreds of princely states, settling refugees and drafting a Constitution. Leaders who had backed linguistic provinces for 25 years now worried that redrawing boundaries in the middle of all this would feed what the JVP Committee later called “a narrow provincialism”.
So the question went to an inquiry. On a recommendation of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, the President of the Constituent Assembly appointed a commission in June 1948 to report on four proposed provinces:
- Andhra, carved out of Madras;
- Karnataka, from parts of Madras, Bombay, Hyderabad and Mysore;
- Kerala, from Malabar and the states of Travancore and Cochin;
- Maharashtra, from Bombay, the Central Provinces and Berar and Hyderabad.
The constitutional power to make such changes is a separate topic, covered in the site’s note on Article 3 and state reorganisation, and the wider design of Centre-state relations sits in the note on federalism in India.
What the Dhar Commission Recommended and Why
The Dhar Commission recommended against forming any of the four linguistic provinces for the time being. Its report, signed on 10 December 1948, was unanimous and without a dissenting minute.
A small spelling point first. The report and the Congress papers of the time print the chairman’s name as S. K. Dar. Textbooks and most exam material write “Dhar”, which is why the body is usually called the Dhar Commission. Both names refer to the same Linguistic Provinces Commission.
The commission had three members, a secretary and a set of associate members from the regions concerned, who helped examine witnesses but did not sign the report:
- S. K. Dar, retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, chairman;
- Dr Panna Lall, a retired member of the Indian Civil Service;
- Jagat Narain Lal, a member of the Constituent Assembly;
- B. C. Banerjee, Accountant-General of Bihar, as secretary.
It worked quickly. The first meeting was held on 19 July 1948, and tours to Vizagapatam, Madras, Madura, Mangalore, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Hubli, Poona and Bombay followed. The report says it received about 1,000 written memoranda and recorded the evidence of over 700 witnesses.
Its conclusions, in paragraph 152 of the report, were these:
- Forming provinces on “exclusively or even mainly linguistic considerations” was not in the larger interests of the nation and should not be taken up.
- Madras, Bombay and the Central Provinces and Berar did have serious administrative problems, but these needed an administrative solution from the Centre, not new provinces.
- Re-forming provinces could wait until the princely states were integrated and the country had stabilised.
- Language could be one factor among many when provinces were eventually re-formed, but never the decisive or main one.
- Bilingual border districts should not be broken up, and the cities of Bombay and Madras deserved special treatment.
The reasoning is worth remembering in the commission’s own terms. It feared that a linguistic majority would come to treat a province as its own homeland and push minorities out, and it gave more weight to administrative convenience, financial viability and geographical contiguity than to shared speech. It was a judgment made in the shadow of Partition, and it read the demand for Andhra and Maharashtra as a risk to a unity that was still fragile.
What the JVP Committee Concluded in 1949
The JVP Committee agreed with the Dhar Commission on timing but not on principle. Where the commission had said language should never be the main test, the committee accepted that popular feeling could, in the end, decide.
The Congress set up the committee at its Jaipur session in December 1948, soon after the Dhar report appeared. Its name comes from the initials of its three members: Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, the Congress president. Its task was to review the old Congress policy “in the light of” the Dhar report and the new problems that independence had brought.
Its report, dated 1 April 1949, reached four conclusions:
- The first consideration had to be the security, unity and economic prosperity of India, and separatist tendencies should be discouraged.
- It preferred to postpone new provinces for a few years.
- If public sentiment was “insistent and overwhelming”, democrats had to submit to it, subject to conditions for the good of India as a whole.
- Andhra could go first, because it had the widest agreement behind it, but only if its supporters gave up their claim to Madras city. Greater Bombay, if Bombay province were ever divided, would become a separate unit.
That third point is the one that mattered later. The committee had written a condition into the record, and within four years the Telugu-speaking districts met it on the street rather than at a conference table.
How Potti Sriramulu’s Fast Led to Andhra State
The Andhra demand forced the issue in 1952. Potti Sriramulu, a Congress worker from the Telugu districts of Madras State, began a fast on 19 October 1952 for a separate Andhra state and died in December 1952 without breaking it. His death set off protests and violence across the Telugu districts.
On 19 December 1952, Nehru announced that an Andhra State would be formed. Parliament passed the Andhra State Act, 1953, and the new state came into being on 1 October 1953 as a Part A state. It was made of the Telugu-speaking districts of Madras State, from Srikakulam in the north to Chittoor and Nellore in the south, together with the Alur, Adoni and Rayadrug taluks of Bellary district. Madras city stayed with Madras, exactly as the JVP Committee had required, and Kurnool became the capital.
Andhra was the first state formed openly on a language basis, and it made every other demand harder to refuse. Within three months, on 22 December 1953, Nehru told Parliament that a commission would examine reorganization “objectively and dispassionately” for the whole country.
What the Fazl Ali Commission Recommended
The Fazl Ali Commission recommended a country of 16 States and 3 centrally administered territories, built on a balance of language, administration, economics and national unity rather than on language alone. It was appointed by a Ministry of Home Affairs resolution of 29 December 1953, and its three members signed the report on 30 September 1955:
- Fazl Ali, the chairman, a judge;
- H. N. Kunzru, a parliamentarian;
- K. M. Panikkar, a historian and diplomat.
Its terms of reference asked it to study the historical background, the existing situation and every relevant factor, first to settle the broad principles and then, if it chose, to propose the lines on which particular states should be reorganized.
The principles
In paragraphs 162 and 163 the commission set out its approach. It concluded that states could not be reorganized on “the single test of either language or culture”, and it proposed a balanced approach:
- treat linguistic homogeneity as an important aid to administration, but not as a binding rule that overrides administrative, financial or political considerations;
- meet the educational and cultural needs of language groups, whether they live in single-language or mixed states;
- keep composite states where the balance of considerations favours them, with safeguards for all groups;
- repudiate the “homeland” idea, because it denies equal rights to all citizens across the Union;
- reject “one language one state”, since one language could support more than one state and the Hindi-speaking population could not be put in a single unit;
- counter any regional feeling this might breed by strengthening the links between the Centre and the states.
The main recommendations
The structural proposals were as important as the new boundaries. The commission wanted the Part A, Part B and Part C distinction to go, the office of Rajpramukh (the former ruler who headed a Part B state) abolished, and Article 371, which gave the Centre general control over Part B states, dropped. Most Part C states were to merge with larger neighbours.
On the map itself, it proposed these changes:
- a new Kerala, from Travancore-Cochin and Malabar, and a new Karnataka built around Mysore;
- a separate state of Vidarbha from the Marathi-speaking districts of Madhya Pradesh;
- a residuary Hyderabad of Telugu-speaking districts (Telangana), which could join Andhra after the general elections expected around 1961 if its legislature agreed by a two-thirds majority;
- an enlarged bilingual Bombay that took in Saurashtra, Kutch and the Marathi-speaking districts of Hyderabad;
- no division of Punjab, no Jharkhand state in south Bihar and no hill state in Assam;
- Delhi, Manipur and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as centrally administered territories.
Panikkar’s note of dissent
The report was not fully unanimous. K. M. Panikkar did not accept its recommendation that Uttar Pradesh stay as it was, and he set out his reasons in a separate note. Uttar Pradesh had over 63 million people, more than a sixth of India, and held 86 of the 499 seats in the Lok Sabha. A single unit that large, he argued, would unbalance the federation. He proposed a new “State of Agra” from the Meerut, Agra, Rohilkhand and Jhansi divisions and some adjoining districts. The government did not take it up.
How the 1956 Act and the Seventh Amendment Redrew the Map
The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 (Act 37 of 1956), dated 31 August 1956, put a modified version of the commission’s plan into law. Its appointed day was 1 November 1956. The Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, dated 19 October 1956, came into force on the same day and changed the constitutional frame to match.
The Seventh Amendment did three things that matter for this topic:
- it abolished the Part A, Part B, Part C and Part D categories and replaced them with two kinds of unit, States and Union territories;
- it rewrote the First Schedule, listing 14 States and 6 Union territories;
- it rewrote Articles 239 and 240, so that every Union territory would be run by the President through an administrator.
The 14 States were Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Bombay, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Madras, Mysore, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The 6 Union territories were Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Laccadive, Minicoy and Amindivi Islands. The present list and the logic behind it are in the note on Union territories of India.
Parliament didn’t copy the report. The main departures were these:
| Question | Fazl Ali Commission (1955) | States Reorganisation Act (1956) |
|---|---|---|
| Telangana | Separate residuary Hyderabad, possible merger after about 1961 | Merged with Andhra at once to form Andhra Pradesh |
| Vidarbha | Separate state | Merged into bilingual Bombay |
| Himachal Pradesh and Tripura | Merge with Punjab and Assam | Kept as Union territories |
| Laccadive, Minicoy and Amindivi | Part of the new Kerala | A separate Union territory |
| Total | 16 States, 3 territories | 14 States, 6 Union territories |
The Act also did something the commission had hinted at in its call for Centre-state links. Section 15 created five Zonal Councils, Northern, Central, Eastern, Western and Southern, as forums for neighbouring states to settle common problems. Their working today is covered in the note on Zonal Councils.
What Changed After 1956
The 1956 map was a settlement, not an ending. The two compromises Parliament made against the commission’s advice, a bilingual Bombay and a single Punjab, were the first to give way:
- 1 May 1960: the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960 divided Bombay into Gujarat and Maharashtra, after the movements traced in the note on the Mahagujarat movement.
- 1 November 1966: the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 created Haryana and transferred hill areas to Himachal Pradesh.
- 2 June 2014: the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 separated Telangana, undoing the 1956 merger that the commission had advised against.
Other states came from different pressures: tribal identity in the Northeast, the integration of Sikkim and, in 2000, the development-based demands that produced Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. India today has 28 States and 8 Union territories. Language drew the 1956 map; later changes answered to ethnicity, geography and uneven development as much as to speech, which is why the note on regionalism belongs next to this one.
Where the Question of New States Stands Today
The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 is still in force, and its Zonal Councils still meet under the Union Home Minister. There has been no second commission. Bills to set one up were introduced in Parliament in 2001, 2005 and 2014, and none became law, so every change since 1956 has been made one case at a time through a separate Act under Article 3.
Recent practice also shows a turn away from new boundaries towards autonomy inside existing states. In February 2026 the Centre, the Nagaland government and the Eastern Nagaland Peoples’ Organisation signed an agreement to create the Frontier Nagaland Territorial Authority for six eastern districts, after a long demand for a separate state. The details are in the current-affairs note on why Eastern Nagaland got autonomy. It follows the Fazl Ali Commission’s instinct more than its map: meet the grievance with safeguards first and redraw the boundary only if that fails.
How to Study the Dhar Commission for Exams
This topic sits in GS Paper I under post-independence consolidation and reorganization of states, and it feeds GS Paper II through federalism and Article 3. Mains questions usually ask for judgment rather than dates. Mains 2016 GS Paper I asked, “Has the formation of linguistic States strengthened the cause of Indian Unity?“, and a good answer needs all three bodies in it. On the Prelims side, Indian Polity accounts for 240 of the 1,403 questions in the site’s Prelims question bank, and statement questions on who chaired what are a common format.
Facts to revise until they are automatic:
- Dhar Commission: appointed 17 June 1948 by the President of the Constituent Assembly, report 10 December 1948, rejected language as the main basis.
- JVP Committee: Nehru, Patel and Sitaramayya, Jaipur Congress, report 1 April 1949, postpone but bow to “insistent and overwhelming” sentiment.
- Andhra State: formed 1 October 1953 after Potti Sriramulu’s death in December 1952; Madras city excluded.
- Fazl Ali Commission: Fazl Ali, Kunzru and Panikkar; appointed 29 December 1953; report 30 September 1955; 16 States and 3 territories.
- Panikkar’s note of dissent: split Uttar Pradesh and create a State of Agra.
- States Reorganisation Act and Seventh Amendment: in force 1 November 1956; 14 States and 6 Union territories; Parts A, B, C and D abolished; five Zonal Councils.
The confusions that cost marks are predictable. The first is treating the Dhar Commission as a Congress body; it was appointed by the President of the Constituent Assembly, while the JVP Committee was the Congress’s own. The second is thinking the Fazl Ali Commission proposed one state per language; it explicitly rejected that. The third is assuming the 1956 Act followed the report; Telangana and Vidarbha are the two cases that prove it didn’t.
| Body or law | Set up by | Year | Core verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dhar Commission | President of the Constituent Assembly | 1948 | Language not the main test; no new provinces now |
| JVP Committee | Indian National Congress | 1949 | Postpone, but Andhra first if Madras is given up |
| Fazl Ali Commission | Government of India (MHA resolution) | 1955 | Balanced approach; 16 States, 3 territories |
| States Reorganisation Act | Parliament | 1956 | 14 States, 6 Union territories |
The real skill here is holding a sequence in your head: a principle promised, a principle doubted, a condition set, a crisis that met the condition and a law that compromised. Once you can tell that story in five sentences, most questions on the linguistic reorganization of states become questions about which part of the story to stress.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Dhar Commission?
The Dhar Commission, formally the Linguistic Provinces Commission, was appointed on 17 June 1948 by the President of the Constituent Assembly to report on creating Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra provinces. It was chaired by S. K. Dar, a retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, with Panna Lall and Jagat Narain Lal as members. It reported on 10 December 1948.
What did the Dhar Commission recommend?
It recommended that provinces should not be formed on exclusively or even mainly linguistic grounds and that no new province should be created for the time being. It accepted that language could be one factor among others, but put administrative convenience, finances and geographical contiguity first. It also advised that bilingual border districts and the cities of Bombay and Madras be treated separately.
Who were the members of the JVP Committee?
The JVP Committee was named after its three members: Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, who was then Congress president. The Congress set it up at its Jaipur session in December 1948 to review the Dhar report. Its report is dated 1 April 1949.
Is the Fazl Ali Commission the same as the States Reorganisation Commission?
Yes. The States Reorganisation Commission of 1953 to 1955 is often called the Fazl Ali Commission after its chairman, Fazl Ali. Its other members were H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar. It should not be confused with the Dhar Commission of 1948, which was a different and earlier body.
Which was the first state formed on a linguistic basis?
Andhra State, formed on 1 October 1953 under the Andhra State Act, 1953, was the first state created openly on a language basis. It followed Potti Sriramulu’s fast and death in December 1952. It was later enlarged into Andhra Pradesh on 1 November 1956 by adding the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad State.
How many states and union territories did the 1956 reorganization create?
The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 and the Seventh Amendment created 14 States and 6 Union territories from 1 November 1956. The Fazl Ali Commission had proposed 16 States and 3 territories. The difference came mainly from merging Telangana with Andhra, merging Vidarbha into Bombay and keeping Himachal Pradesh and Tripura as Union territories.
Who wrote the note of dissent in the States Reorganisation Commission?
K. M. Panikkar wrote a separate note disagreeing with the recommendation to keep Uttar Pradesh intact. He argued that a state with over 63 million people and 86 of the 499 Lok Sabha seats would unbalance the federation. He proposed a new ‘State of Agra’ from its western divisions, which the government did not accept.
Did the Fazl Ali Commission support one language one state?
No. The commission explicitly rejected the theory of ‘one language one state’ and the ‘homeland’ idea. It treated linguistic homogeneity as an important aid to administration but not a binding rule, and it balanced it against national unity, finances and administrative needs.
Practice Questions
Prelims
1. Consider the following statements about the Linguistic Provinces Commission of 1948: 1. It was appointed by the President of the Constituent Assembly. 2. It recommended the immediate formation of Andhra and Maharashtra provinces. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: (a) The Dhar Commission was appointed by the President of the Constituent Assembly and advised that no new province be formed for the present.
2. The JVP Committee of 1949 consisted of which of the following?
- (a) Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya
- (b) Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad
- (c) Fazl Ali, H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar
- (d) S. K. Dar, Panna Lall and Jagat Narain Lal
Answer: (a) JVP stands for the initials of Jawaharlal, Vallabhbhai and Pattabhi; option (c) is the States Reorganisation Commission and option (d) the Dhar Commission.
3. Consider the following statements about the States Reorganisation Commission (1953-1955): 1. It proposed 16 States and 3 centrally administered territories. 2. It recommended a separate state of Vidarbha. 3. Its report was unanimous on every state. Which of the statements given above are correct?
- (a) 1 and 2 only
- (b) 2 and 3 only
- (c) 1 and 3 only
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer: (a) K. M. Panikkar wrote a separate note disagreeing on Uttar Pradesh, so statement 3 is wrong.
4. Which of the following was a Union territory under the First Schedule as it stood on 1 November 1956?
- (a) Goa
- (b) Tripura
- (c) Chandigarh
- (d) Pondicherry
Answer: (b) The six Union territories of 1956 were Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Laccadive, Minicoy and Amindivi Islands.
5. Consider the following statements about the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956: 1. It abolished the classification of states into Part A, Part B, Part C and Part D. 2. It came into force on the same day as the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: (c) Both came into force on 1 November 1956, and the amendment replaced the three categories with States and Union territories.
Mains
- Linguistic reorganization of Indian States was driven by popular pressure from below. Comment. (15 marks, 250 words) Previous year: Mains 2026, GS Paper I.
- The political and administrative reorganization of states and territories has been a continuous ongoing process since the mid-nineteenth century. Discuss with examples. (15 marks, 250 words) Previous year: Mains 2022, GS Paper I.
- The Dhar Commission and the JVP Committee both advised caution on linguistic provinces, yet for different reasons. Compare their approaches. (10 marks, 150 words)
- The States Reorganisation Commission rejected both the ‘homeland’ concept and the theory of ‘one language one state’. Explain these principles and assess whether the 1956 Act honoured them. (15 marks, 250 words)
- Examine K. M. Panikkar’s argument about the size of Uttar Pradesh in the context of balance among the units of a federation. (10 marks, 150 words)