While the demand for a hill state had been sporadically raised even before Independence, the Uttarakhand movement gathered momentum in the 1990s, and the state came into being in 2000, along with Jharkhand (carved out of Bihar) and Chhattisgarh (from Madhya Pradesh).Long history of demandThough the earliest demands for special rights for the region date back to 1815 after the East India Company annexed Kumaon, the cause attained prominence in 1938 when Jawaharlal Nehru supported it in the Congress’s special session.According to Emma Mawdsley’s 1999 research paper ‘A New Himalayan State in India: Popular Perceptions of Regionalism, Politics, and Development’, ahead of Independence, elite representatives from the region argued that the hills should be separated from the plains. These demands were ignored, and Kumaon and British Garhwal were merged with the new state of Uttar Pradesh in 1947, with Tehri Garhwal following in 1949.The demand was revived in 1952, when veteran CPI leader PC Joshi proposed a separate hill state.Over the next four decades, three Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh came from Uttaranchal (GB Pant, HN Bahuguna, and ND Tiwari), but all three opposed the creation of a separate hill state while they ruled.When the region’s first political outfit, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, was formed in July 1979, there flowed a steady and popular support for the formation of a hill state. The UKD was established by Bipin Chandra Tripathi, Indramani Badoni, Kashi Singh Airy and Professor Devi Datt Pant, and the party ensured the idea grew pervasive among the residents of the region.Story continues below this adApart from the aspirations of the hill people, another argument made for a separate state was that Uttar Pradesh was too large to be governed effectively.A major turning point came in 1994, which infused urgency into the statehood movement and made Garhwalis and Kumaonis ignore mutual differences to unite under an Uttarakhandi identity.This was the year that the then UP Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, decided to implement a 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes. The predominantly upper caste population in the hills was alarmed, assuming that the region would be flooded with ‘outsiders’ from the plains filling up jobs and educational institutes.Kamla Pant, a leader of the Uttarakhand Mahila Manch who participated in the statehood movement, recalled that the region was rent with cries of, “Aarakshan ka ilaaj prithak rajya (A separate state is the cure for reservation).”Story continues below this adThe state then saw several rallies and demonstrations over the statehood demand.In 1996, two years after the infamous Rampur Tiraha case where the police opened fire at protesters, killing six, with allegations of sexual abuse against women, then Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda announced the formation of Uttaranchal, which was renamed as Uttarakhand in 2007, on Independence Day. In 1998, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government sent the Uttar Pradesh reorganisation Bill to the UP government, following which the legislation was passed with 26 amendments suggested by the state Assembly.Reasons for demands of Uttarakhand statehoodPolitical representation: Political representation was a grave concern for the hill people. While the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh had 68 constituencies in the Assembly, the Uttarakhand region had 22 seats in the UP Assembly (at the time of state formation) despite having a population similar to HP. The Ramashankar Kaushik Committee, which submitted its report recommending a separate hill state to the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in 1994, recorded this angst.The report recommended Gairsain in Chamoli, at the border of Garhwal and Kumaon, as the capital for the hill state. “Hill capital for the hill state: This was the logic behind the demand for Gairsain as the capital,” said Pant.Story continues below this adWhen Dehradun was declared the temporary capital, anger returned as people argued that Lucknow was closer to Kumaon than Dehradun. Moreover, Pant said, the hills were emptying at an alarming rate due to migration, and in the demand for statehood, the agitators had envisioned employment opportunities in the hills to stem this crisis.“In our vision statement, we had a plan, rooted in gram sabhas. A state devoid of crimes, corruption, and unemployment, and where decisions are taken consulting women, among other stakeholders,” she said. However, Pant adds, none of these demands has seen actualisation.Allocation of resources: Another declaration behind the demand was that the hill region’s resources were being exploited by the rest of UP without adequate recompense or balanced development in return. This was compounded by the perception of the cultural and geographical distance between the “plains-based decision makers” and their lack of knowledge about the hill region, its people and their needs.When the state was eventually formed, the demography had a good non-Pahari population too, with the inclusion of Udham Singh Nagar and Haridwar.Story continues below this adOf Uttarakhand’s total geographical area of 5.35 million hectares, 86% or 4.6 million hectares make up the hills, while plains amount to 14% or 0.7 million hectares. When it comes to political representation, out of the total 13 districts, the three falling in the plains are Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar. These account for 30 of the total 70 Assembly seats.How Uttarakhand has performed vis-a-vis its parent state Uttar PradeshThe per capita income of Uttarakhand in 2023-24 was at Rs 2.6 lakh, while that of UP was Rs 93,514. The Gross Domestic Product (constant prices) for the year 2023-24 (2024-25 not available for UP) for Uttarakhand was Rs 2 lakh crore, while UP’s GSDP stood at Rs 14 lakh crore (figures as per Niti Aayog).According to the State Level Bankers’ Committee, as of March 2025, Uttarakhand’s credit-cum-deposit ratio was 44 per cent while that of parent state UP was Rs 54 per cent.In human development indices, Uttarakhand fares (slightly) better than Uttar Pradesh.Story continues below this adAs per the National Family Health Survey 5 conducted between 2019 and 2021, the sex ratio at birth in rural UP is 943 (females for every 1,000 male children) and 933 in urban UP. In Uttarakhand, the sex ratio at birth in rural areas is 937 and in urban areas is 1,094.While 91 per cent of UP lives with an active electricity connection, 99.6 per cent have a connection in the hill state. In UP, only 39 per cent of women and 48 per cent of men have undergone 10 or more years of schooling, but in Uttarakhand, this figure is at 50.4 per cent for women and 59.8 per cent for men. UP’s infant mortality rate stands at 50.4 per 1,000 live births, while that of Uttarakhand is 39.1.Institutional births in both states are at the same level, with 83.4 per cent of births being in a health facility in UP and 83.2 per cent of births in Uttarakhand. Anaemia was prevalent in women in UP, with 50 per cent suffering from the disease between the ages of 15 and 49, and Uttarakhand’s 42.6 per cent of women of the same age group were anaemic. As many as 34.8 per cent of women in UP experienced spousal violence, and in Uttarakhand, 15.1 per cent of women have experienced it.In Uttarakhand, 9.67 per cent of the population was recorded as multidimensionally poor, down from 17.67 in NFHS 4. This figure was at 22.93 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, down from 37.68 per cent. However, Uttarakhand’s population as per the 2011 census is 1.01 crore, while that of UP is 19.98 crore, accounting for 16.5 per cent of India’s population.Where Uttarakhand lagsStory continues below this adUttarakhand’s education and health sectors have remained largely underdeveloped. In terms of school education deprivation, though Uttarakhand fared better than UP with 4.65 per cent deprived, this figure has seen an increase from NFHS 4, which pointed at a deprivation of 4.37 per cent. The population deprived of education in UP was at 10.91 per cent.There are 7,073 schools with enrolments below 20 students, and 1,740 schools have just one teacher. Currently, the state has 146 single-child schools, 131 of which are government ones, and 1,379 government schools have an average of three students. According to the 2023-24 report of the Unified District Information System for Education, a Central database, Uttarakhand is the state with the second-highest number of schools with fewer than 20 enrolments (37.5%), only after Arunachal Pradesh (39.1%). Hilly terrain and migration can be attributed to this. In Uttar Pradesh, 5.7 per cent schools see an enrollment below 20.Incidentally, a hill-plain divide is also apparent within the state in the health sector. A Comptroller and Auditor General report based on audit between 2016 and 2021 revealed a stark difference in the availability of doctors between the plains and hilly districts: In four plains districts of Dehradun, Haridwar, Nainital and Udham Singh Nagar, there was a 50 per cent shortage of specialist doctors against sanctioned posts, while in nine hilly districts, the shortage reached 70 per cent.Additionally, the hill state is plagued by frequent disasters and extreme weather events. Since April 2025, multiple episodes of floods in Dharali, Tharali, Dehradun, and other districts have resulted in at least 135 deaths and 86 people feared dead. Episodes of human-wildlife conflict have also been frequent in the state.