underdeveloped and underrepresented in state and central politics. Agrarian crisis and farmer's suicides are also cited as the reason for separate statehood. Purvanchal Purvanchal is a geographic region of north-central India, which comprises the eastern end of Uttar Pradesh state. It is bounded by Nepal to the north, Bihar state to the east, Baghelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state to the south, the Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh to the west. Purvanchal comprises three divisions – Awadhi region in the west, Bhojpuri region in the east, and the Baghelkhand region in the south. The most commonly spoken language in Purvanchal is Bhojpuri. The area is represented by 23 Members of Parliament to the lower house of Indian Parliament, and 117 legislators in the 403 member Uttar Pradesh state assembly or Vidhan Sabha. The region includes the districts of Azamgarh, Ballia, Basti, Chandauli, Deoria, Ghazipur, Gorakhpur, Jaunpur, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Mau, Mirzapur, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Siddharth Nagar, and Varanasi. As a fallout of the movement for Telangana, then state chief minister Mayawati, proposed on 13 December 2009, to carve out a separate state of Purvanchal out of Uttar Pradesh, with Gorakhpur or Varanasi as its capital. West Bengal Gorkhaland Gorkhaland is a proposed state covering areas inhabited by the ethnic Indian Gorkha people, namely the Darjeeling hills and the Dooars in the northern part of West Bengal. Nepali is spoken by 40% of the population of the Darjeeling district and 51% of the population of the Kalimpong district. The movement for Gorkhaland has gained momentum in the line of ethno-linguistic-cultural sentiment of the people who desire to identify themselves as Gorkha. The demand for a separate administrative region has existed since 1907, when the Hillmen's Association of Darjeeling submitted a memorandum to the Morley-Minto reforms committee. After Indian independence, the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL) was the first political party from the region to demand greater identity for the Gorkha ethnic group and economic freedom for the community. In 1980, the Pranta Parishad of Darjeeling wrote to the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, with the need to form a state for the Gorkhas. The movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland gained serious momentum during the 1980s, when a violent agitation was carried out by the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) led by Subhash Ghising. The agitation ultimately led to the establishment of a semiautonomous body in