Journalist Shekhar Gupta says UP should be divided into 4-5 states; here's how twitteratis reacted
New Delhi: Senior Indian Journalist, author, and founder of ‘The Print’, Shekhar Gupta on Saturday voiced his opinion about the state of governance in Uttar Pradesh and asserted that the state should be broken up in 4 or 5 states to fix the chaos in the governance.
Gupta took to Twitter to express his views on the matter and added that Uttar Pradesh has become the ‘broken heartland’ of the country and the only way to fix it was to break the state into 4 or 5 states.
“Uttar Pradesh is India’s broken heartland.... The only way to fix it is to break it up into 4 or 5 states.” Gupta wrote in his tweet followed by a hashtag “My #NationalInterest...”
The tweet received a mixed response from twitter users. While a section of users agreed with the opinion of Gupta, others insisted that the state was run and managed adequately by the current CM Yogi Adityanath.
Ashutosh Varshney, Professor of International Studies and Director, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University, also agreed with the opinion of Gupta and supported his stance. In a series of tweets, Ashutosh asserted that UP has become ungovernable. He also stressed that breaking UP into multiple states will not be hard as it doesn’t have a regional identity of its own.
He also explained in the thread as to why there would not be any difficulties in breaking up UP and how that can prove to be a beneficial move for the better governance of the state.
Here’s the tweet by Shekhar Gupta, followed by Ashutosh’s analysis:
Uttar Pradesh is India’s broken heartland....
— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) July 11, 2020
The only way to fix it is to break it up into 4 or 5 states....
My #NationalInterest... https://t.co/OiUyr8PA4r
With 200 million citizens, UP state is ungovernable| Only a few countries in the world are bigger| @ShekharGupta is right to say that UP should be broken up| UP has no regional identity| No UP city is like Bombay or Hyderabad| A breakup will not touch off huge political passions| https://t.co/o6VRf2FCCT
— Ashutosh Varshney (@ProfVarshney) July 11, 2020
When Gujarat was carved out of Maharashtra, a key battle was over who would get Bombay| A similar battle took place between Telangana and Andhra over Hyderabad| No city in UP, not even Lucknow, has the same status| At least on this dimension, UP’s breakup can’t be too tough|
— Ashutosh Varshney (@ProfVarshney) July 11, 2020
Breaking up a state is also hard when the state has a strong linguistic/regional identity, as there is in Tamil Nadu and Bengal, among others| UP does not have a regional identity| No hearts will be irreparably broken if UP is divided into smaller units|
— Ashutosh Varshney (@ProfVarshney) July 11, 2020
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15 passengers sustain minor injuries after KSRTC bus overturns in Karnataka's Chitradurga district
Chitradurga (Karnataka) (PTI): Fifteen passengers sustained minor injuries after the KSRTC bus they were travelling in overturned after the driver allegedly lost control of the vehicle in this district on Tuesday morning, police said.
The accident occurred near Heggare in Challakere taluk of Chitradurga district at around 7 am, they said.
According to police, the bus was en route from Raichur to Bengaluru when the driver allegedly lost control of the vehicle, hit a divider and the bus overturned.
Fifteen passengers sustained minor injuries and were shifted to the Challakere Government Hospital, they said.
The accident is suspected to have occurred due to the driver losing control after falling asleep, police said.
Further investigation is underway, they added.
