Admission of new states
Also called: Article 2 · Topic: Federalism and Centre-State Relations · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 9 "Constitution as a Living Document"
Meaning
Article 2 gives Parliament the power to admit into the Union, or set up, new states from territory that is not already part of India. Parliament does this by ordinary law. Article 4 says such a law is not counted as an amendment of the Constitution under Article 368. So no special majority is needed, even when the law changes the First Schedule (the list of states and UTs).
Example
Sikkim joined India in two steps. The 35th Amendment (1974) made it an "associate state". The 36th Amendment (1975) made it a full state of the Union.
Don't confuse with
- Formation of new states (Art. 3): this is about reshaping territory that is already part of India, for example creating Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014. Art. 2 is about bringing in territory from outside India.
Related concepts
- Formation of new states
- First Schedule
- Indestructible Union of destructible states
- Land Boundary Agreement
- Linguistic federalism