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Return Chandigarh to Punjab, demands Badal

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has demanded that the Centre immediately transfer Chandigarh and other Punjabi-speaking areas to the state.

He urged the Union government to solve all pending issues vis-à-vis the state. "The city (Chandigarh) was basically carved out as the capital of Punjab. The parent state has the right of retaining the capital."

Badal said in 1912 Bihar was carved out of Bengal and it formed its own capital city: Patna. Again, during the re-organisation of Bengal in 1961, Assam came into being with its new capital, Shillong. When Bihar was reorganised in 1936 to create Orissa, the new state got Cuttack as its capital, not Patna.

In 1952, the chief minister continued, Madras was reorganised to form Andhra Pradesh. The new state named its own capital: Hyderabad. And in 1962, Gujarat was created by reorganising Bombay, and Gandhinagar was made the new capital.

''It is unfortunate that this parameter was not applied during the reorganisation of Punjab in 1966, and its capital city was retained as the capital of the new state of Haryana,'' he added.

Badal said the Shiromani Akali Dal and various other political parties had raised the transfer issue at different fora at different times -- but the successive Central governments had always ignored the claim, thus doing "a great injustice" to the state.

It's high-time that Punjab is restored with the "independent capital of Chandigarh and also other Punjabi-speaking areas so that it can keep pace in matter of development with the rest of the country," the chief minister said.

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