Many of us know that India follows this unique way of having UT(Union territories) alongside STATES. So in order to know why we have this unique way we need to go back to post independence time.
How are they different from states:
Usually a Union Territory is controlled by central government unlike a state which contains it’s own state government and a CM. This is the reason why products in UT’s have less tax since we don’t need to add state tax while buying any product. They gets funds directly from central government and are ruled directly by a lieutenant governor who is representative of president and appointed by central government. But again partial statehood is given to union territories for e.g. Delhi (1991) and Puducherry (1963) has it’s own Legislative assembly and council of ministers since they have special importance of being capitals.
Why are they formed:
UT’s were first introduced in States Reorganization act of 1956. After independence the formation of states happened based on linguistic way but there were some complicated places or small regions that had different reasons to not become a part of state in this formal way. We can divide the reasons as following
- people said they don’t want to join the state because of cultural differences
- Some regions which are still being under control of Colonel country (Like Daman & Diu being controlled by Portuguese).
- Islands like Andaman and Nicobar being too distant from any of Indian states and not being big enough to be a state.
- Having a special status to not be a part of state for being very important to be a part of India(Like Delhi)
All the above mentioned reasons has made India to remain with 7 Union Territories namely Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep,
