Interstate Conflicts

Alongside their disputes with the centre over autonomy and the sharing of resources, Indian states have also had many disputes with one another -- sometimes between two neighbouring states, sometimes among several states at once. While courts can act as an arbitrator when such disputes have a genuinely legal character, in practice these conflicts often carry real political weight and tend to be resolved more effectively through negotiation and mutual understanding than through litigation alone.

Two broad kinds of interstate dispute recur most often. The first is the border dispute. States sometimes stake a claim to territory that officially belongs to a neighbouring state. Although language is generally used as the basis for drawing state boundaries, border areas frequently contain populations speaking more than one language, which makes such disputes difficult to settle simply by appealing to which language is spoken by the majority. A long-running example is the dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka over the city of Belgaum; Manipur and Nagaland have a similarly long-standing border dispute. The separation of Haryana from the former state of Punjab produced not only border disagreements but also a dispute over Chandigarh, which today serves as the capital of both states. In 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi reached an understanding with Punjab's leadership under which Chandigarh was to be handed over fully to Punjab, but this transfer has still not taken place. …