The Punjab Suba Movement

The story: The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) commemorated the first entry of a police force inside the Golden Temple on 4th July, 195

The Punjab Suba Movement

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• The story: The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) commemorated the first entry of a police force inside the Golden Temple on 4th July, 1955 during the Punjab Suba movement (Morcha).
• Points to note: The movement started in Punjab soon after Independence. Shiromani Akali Dal (Political Party) was leading the movement for a Punjabi speaking state. But there was opposition to this idea, too. Those in favour of the demand used to raise the slogan Punjabi Suba Amar Rahe and those opposing the demand were raising slogans in favour of ‘Maha-Punjab’. It was in April, 1955 that the government banned the slogans fearing law and order problems under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The demand for creation of Punjabi Suba automatically gave basis to the demand for having a separate state of Haryana.
• Demands: A Punjabi speaking state which will have Punjabi speaking areas’ population, and no attempts to increase or decrease its size artificially shall be made. The Punjabi speaking state will be under the Indian Constitution.
• Formation of Punjab: With the passage of the Punjab Reorganization Act 1966 (and in accordance with the earlier recommendations of the States Reorganization Commission), Haryana was separated from Punjab in 1966 to become the 17th state of India. The erstwhile state of East Punjab was now divided into two states that is Haryana and Punjab, and some territory was also transferred to Himachal Pradesh, then a Union territory. The city of Chandigarh became a Union territory to serve as the provisional capital of both the Punjab and Haryana.
• Constitutional provisions: The Indian constitution empowers the Union government to create new states out of existing states or two merge one state with another. This process is called reorganisation of the states. The basis of reorganisation could be linguistic, religious, ethnic or administrative. The Article 3 provides the following procedure -

1. Presidential reference is sent to the State Assembly
2. After presidential reference, a resolution is tabled and passed in the Assembly
3. The Assembly has to pass a Bill creating the new State/States
4. A separate Bill has to be ratified by Parliament

 

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