ABSTRACT
The State of Maharashtra lies in the north-west of peninsular India, tapering in towards the centre, where it widens slightly. It has borders with seven other constituent parts of the Union. To the south, also on the Arabian Sea coast, is Goa, from where the Maharashtra border reaches into the heart of India in a north-easterly direction; south of this border lie Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Maharashtra is hooked over the northern tip of Andhra Pradesh and ends with an eastern border with Chhattisgarh. To the north lies Madhya Pradesh and, in the north-west, Gujarat. As it nears the coast again, the border with Gujarat is complicated by the presence of Nagar Haveli, an enclave of the inland Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. On 1 May 1960 the State of Bombay (organized into a bilingual state for Marathi and Gujarati speakers in 1956, having some Marathi-speaking districts added to the old province from what is now Madhya Pradesh and from Hyderabad-now part of Andhra Pradesh) was divided into Maharashtra and
Gujarat states. Maharashtra, which retained multilingual Bombay (renamed Mumbai in 1996) as its capital, has an area of 307,713 sq km (118,854 sq miles), making it the thirdlargest state in India (Rajasthan is the largest, while Madhya Pradesh is now only a little bigger than Maharashtra).
