ABSTRACT
The State of Andhra Pradesh lies in southern India, on the eastern shores of the peninsula, and also occupies territory on the central plateau region known as the Deccan. To the south lies the state of Tamil Nadu, to the west, Karnataka, and beyond its northern border, which tends north-eastwards, is Telangana, which separated from the rest of Andhra Pradesh as a separate state on 2 June 2014. In the north-east there is a border with Odisha (known as Orissa until November 2011), where Andhra Pradesh stretches an arm north-eastwards along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. In the Godavari delta Andhra Pradesh surrounds an enclave of the Union Territory of Puducherry (Pondicherry), the small port of Yanam. The state, the ‘land of the Andhras’, was formed on 1 November 1956, by uniting Andhra (the northern, Telugu-speaking part of the old Madras presidency-territories which themselves can be divided into coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema) and the bulk of the former princely state of Hyderabad (the Dominions of the Nizam, which had entered the Indian Union only in 1948) which is Telangana). The post-bifurcation Andhra Pradesh is the eighth largest state in India, with an area of some 160,205 sq km (61,855 sq miles).
