Consider the formation of the following States of India and arrange them in correct chronological order starting from the earliest to the last.
1. Punjab
2. Arunachal Pradesh
3. Nagaland
4. Sikkim
Sel

Question

Consider the formation of the following States of India and arrange them in correct chronological order starting from the earliest to the last.
1. Punjab
2. Arunachal Pradesh
3. Nagaland
4. Sikkim
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, 3, 1, 4, 2 — that is, Nagaland, then Punjab, then Sikkim, then Arunachal Pradesh. (3) Nagaland was inaugurated as a State on 1 December 1963 under the State of Nagaland Act, 1962, carved out of Assam. (1) Punjab in its present form dates from 1 November 1966, when the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 divided the old bilingual Punjab into a Punjabi-speaking Punjab and a Hindi-speaking Haryana, transferred the hill areas to Himachal Pradesh and made Chandigarh a Union Territory serving as the shared capital — that reorganisation is the 'formation' the question is asking about, since a State called Punjab existed in the Union before it. (4) Sikkim became the twenty-second State on 16 May 1975 through the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, having spent about a year as an 'associate state' under the Thirty-fifth Amendment. (2) Arunachal Pradesh, which had been the North-East Frontier Agency and was made a Union Territory under its present name in 1972, attained full statehood on 20 February 1987 under the State of Arunachal Pradesh Act, 1986. Only option (b) sets 1963, 1966, 1975 and 1987 in order.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) It opens correctly with Nagaland but then reverses the two ends of the sequence, placing Arunachal Pradesh (1987, the latest of the four) second and Punjab (1966, the second-earliest) last. It is the trap for a candidate who remembers that Nagaland is the oldest but has no dates for the rest.  (c) Nagaland first and Arunachal Pradesh last are both right, but this puts Sikkim (16 May 1975) ahead of Punjab (1 November 1966). It is the option a candidate lands on by treating Punjab's reorganisation as later than it was, or by assuming Sikkim's merger came very soon after Independence.  (d) It makes Arunachal Pradesh, the most recent of the four to become a State, the earliest — and pushes Punjab to the end. Arunachal Pradesh was still the North-East Frontier Agency in 1963 when Nagaland was already a State, so this order is impossible.

Concept: Under Article 3, Parliament may form a new State by separating territory from an existing State, or by uniting or altering territories, by ordinary law passed on the President's recommendation after the affected State legislature has been given a chance to express its views. That is why India's political map has been redrawn repeatedly since 1956: the States Reorganisation Act of that year rebuilt the map on linguistic lines, the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 completed the linguistic settlement in the north-west, and the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 restructured the entire north-east, giving Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura full statehood on 21 January 1972 while turning Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram into Union Territories that would be upgraded later.

State PCS 2025 Q48 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q48 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer