Telangana, which became India’s 29th state Monday, is not just the country’s 12th largest both in terms of population and area, but also the first to be carved out on a criteria that is not based on language.
A few facts:
Location: Falls roughly between the two main rivers of the region, Krishna and Godavari
Neighbours: Shares boundaries with Andhra Pradesh to the south and east, Maharashtra to the north and northwest, Karnataka to the west and Chhattisgarh and Odisha to the north-east.
Size: India’s 12th largest by population with 35.29 million people, roughly that of Canada — a ranking below Odisha and above Kerala
Area: Again India’s 12th largest with 114,840 sq km and comparable with England — just below Tamil Nadu and well above Bihar.
Legislature: Bicameral with 119 seats in assembly and 40 seats in council
Assembly Representation: Telangana Rashtra Samithi 63, Congress party 21, Telugu Desam 15, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen seven, Bharatiya Janata Party five and others eight.
Lok Sabha Representation: 17 seats
First Chief Minister: Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao
First Governor: Ekkadu Srinivasan Lakshminarasimhan
Capital: Hyderabad (It will also be Andhra Pradesh capital for 10 years)
Other main Cities: Warangal, Nizamabad and Karimnagar
Religions: Hindus 86 percent, Muslims 12.4 percent, Christians 1.2 percent
Language: As main spoken language Telugu 76 percent, Urdu 12 percent, others 12 percent
Literacy: Male 75.6 percent, female 58.77 percent, overall 67.2 percent.
