were governed by the British administration. After the partition of India, some of these administrative divisions became part of the Dominion of Pakistan, whilst the remaining states and provinces formed the Dominion of India. The colonial system of administration continued until 1956 when the States Reorganisation Act abolished the provinces and princely states in favour of new states which were based on language and ethnicity. Several new states and union territories have been created out of the existing states since 1956. The Bombay Reorganisation Act split the Bombay State into the present-day states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 on a linguistic basis. The state of Nagaland was created on 1 December 1963. The Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 carved out a new Hindi-speaking state of Haryana from the southern districts of Punjab state, transferred the northern districts to Himachal Pradesh and designated a union territory around Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana. Statehood was conferred upon Himachal Pradesh on 25 January 1971, and upon Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura on 21 January 1972. The Kingdom of Sikkim joined the Indian Union as a state on 26 April 1975. In 1987, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram became states on 20 February, followed by Goa on 30 May of the same year. Goa's northern exclaves of Daman and Diu became a separate union territory. Three new states were created in November 2000: Chhattisgarh (1 November) was created out of eastern Madhya Pradesh; Uttaranchal (9 November), which was later renamed Uttarakhand, was created out of the mountainous districts of northwest Uttar Pradesh; and Jharkhand (15 November) was created out of the southern districts of Bihar. On 2 June 2014, Telangana was separated from Andhra Pradesh as the 29th state of the union. On 31 October 2019, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was split into two new Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. On 26 January 2020, the Union Territory of Daman and Diu and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli were merged into one Union Territory: the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. India may have 50 states in the near future if all statehood demands are conceded. Table of all proposed States Andhra Pradesh Rayalaseema This proposed state would consist of eight districts, namely Kurnool, Nandyal, Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, Kadapa, Annamayya, Tirupati, and Chittoor. Rayalaseema Parirakshana Samithi is a political