ABSTRACT
The State of Orissa lies on the north-eastern shores of peninsular India, on the Bay of Bengal, with West Bengal to the north-east, Jharkhand (part of Bihar until November 2000) to the north and Chhattisgarh (part of Madhya Pradesh until November 2000) to the north-west and west. Andhra Pradesh lies to the south or, rather, to the south-east, where it stretches up the coast beneath an inland tail of Orissa that extends southwestwards along the highlands. Orissa, the ‘land of the Oriyas’, has enjoyed a distinct identity, if a varying extent, for many centuries, a fertile, coastal territory dominating its wooded, hilly hinterland that otherwise bears more resemblance to the predominantly tribal areas of Jharkhand and, to a lesser degree, Chhattisgarh. Long ruled from Bengal, like Bihar, Orissa became a separate province on 1 April 1936, was merged with its princely states in 1949 and became a ‘Part A’ state under the 1950 Constitution. It was unaffected by the federal reorganization of 1956, as it already constituted a linguistic state. Orissa has an area of 155,707 sq km (60,103 sq miles), making it the seventhlargest state of India.
