Vidarbha: The State That Was Promised Twice
By Pushpak Gondane In 1955, the States Reorganisation Commission recommended Vidarbha as a separate state with Nagpur as its capital. Seventy years later, that constitutional promise remains unfulfilled. A Demand Older Than Maharashtra The demand for separate Vidarbha predates Maharashtra itself. As early as the 1920s, leaders from the Central Provinces and Berar (CP & Berar)—including Nagpur, Amravati, Akola, Wardha, Bhandara, and Chandrapur—began advocating for an autonomous Marathi-speaking state in central India. Loknayak M. S. Aney, Brijlal Biyani, and Barrister Abhyankar articulated this vision, fearing Vidarbha would remain politically secondary to western Maharashtra's economic dominance. The Vidarbha Mahasabha, formed in the 1940s, transformed this sentiment into an organized movement. When India gained independence in 1947, CP & Berar had its own functioning legislature in Nagpur with a Governor—complete infrastructure for statehood. The logic wa...